Training Them Up

Show & Tell: ECC Weeks 3 & 4—United States

2011-09-09T07:28:00.001-05:00

Greetings from the great melting pot known as the USA! This year we're trekking the globe with Exploring Countries and Cultures, and our first stop wasn't so much a "stop" as it was just a "continue to stay right where you've been staying." Yep, we were in the United States for two weeks. But even after coming out of a year of U.S. history, we learned a lot and reviewed a lot, so it was two weeks well-spent.

I know I said it in my last weekly report, but we're really enjoying doing Bible in the evenings with Greg. During the course of the past two weeks, we read about Dwight Moody's repentance, boldness, and strength and Harriet Tubman's compassion, joy, and perseverance. We also finished the first book of Tales of the Kingdom, which was much-loved by everyone in the family, and we read about Navajo Indians and missionary kids from Window on the World. Did you know that many missionaries have to send their kids off to special schools for missionary families? I had no idea! I guess I just assumed they either went to school where they lived or they homeschooled. I can imagine the kind of dedication to the Lord it takes to pack up your family and head to a foreign country. I cannot imagine the kind of dedication to the Lord it takes to do so knowing that your family will not be intact once you're there. This really touched a tender spot in my heart and has been a topic of prayer in my life over the past two weeks.

Next week we begin reading through the book of Matthew, so Hannah made a bookmark for us to use as we read.

In geography, we really focused on getting to know how our little area fits into the world. First, we labeled a map of North America so we could see what all borders the United States. We also labeled two major U.S. landmarks: the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

Next we did a map of the United States. We labeled the "four corners" of the U.S., as well as all the states that border our home state of Texas.

Hannah's friend Rachel spent the night one night, and we had fun reading How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A. together.

I had printed up little cards with pictures of the cherry pie "ingredients" on them.

Front of the cards

Back of the cards

As we read the story, the kids looked at a U.S. map to find where we were supposed to go to get each ingredient. When they found the right location, they would place the card for that ingredient in the correct spot on the map.

When we finished the story, we baked (of course!) cherry pie. But this time I took Erin's suggestion and bought some frozen pie crust. It saved me a good hour's worth of work and, if I'm really honest with myself, it tasted better, too. Thanks, Erin! :)

We bought a 2-pack, so we cut the second one into strips to give it that "woven" look. Go ahead and say it: Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater! :)

Then the kids raided Millie's kitchen and found some cookie cutters to use on the leftover dough.

Very proud of their hard work! :)

While the pie was baking, the girls went into the school room and put together a North America GeoPuzzle. It was a lot of fun watching them work on this. They delegated tasks and got straight to work. They changed strategies a couple of times, but they really worked well as a team. And that's a good thing because someone in that group tends to be a weeeeee bit bossy. But I won't say who. ;)

Mission accomplished!

One of our goals in geography this year is not just to learn where the states and countries are on a map, but to try to learn about the culture in each area. So far, our art projects have been a great way for us to accomplish that.

Because the United States was first inhabited by Native American Indians, the first art project we did was to make sandpaintings similar to those that the Navajo Indians made.

Sketching out her design

Adding the sand

Think she's tired of having her picture taken? ;P

Some neighborhood kids that were walking the street even stopped in to join us. That was kinda fun!

And since Hollywood is such a major influence in the United States today, we went back to the roots of motion picture and examined the old-fashioned flipbook. Actually, we were supposed to have the kids make their own flipbooks, but after seeing the amazing video Pauline's hubby did with their kids, we decided to skip the flipbook and go straight for the motion picture. :) The kids were super-excited about this one. Rachel and Hannah came up with a storyline and gathered their props, and we got busy taking pictures. Here's what they came up with.

Now, granted, it isn't nearly as good as the one Jason and the kids did. But still, I thought it was pretty clever. Greg, however, thought it was much better when I was telling him about it than when he actually watched it. :P But the girls did walk away understanding that motion pictures are made up of a series of still images, and that was the main idea, so I'm gonna call it a success. :)

In science, we've been looking at deciduous and coniferous forests. One of our assignments was to map all of the coniferous, deciduous, and mountain forests in the entire world.

It doesn't look that hard, does it? Try it sometime. You'll be ready to rip your hair out by the end of it. But at least I learned from it, and was able to adjust as needed a couple of days later for another assignment. We were supposed to draw a sketch of six different plants that were listed on our worksheet. Instead, we googled them and printed them out.

Something we did that was better-suited for Hannah was searching for different kinds of leaves. We learned that leaves are used to help identify trees and plants, and if you learn to look for certain attributes of leaves, you can compare your findings with a field guide to identify your tree.

Some leaves are broad, flat leaves with smooth edges.

Some are needles that grow in clusters of 2 or 3.

Some are broad, flat leaves that have toothed edges.

Some are broad, flat leaves that have lobed edges.

Some grow in an alternating pattern down the stem.

And some grow straight across from each other.

We also learned about several different landforms. Over the summer, I googled images of all the different landforms she would be learning about throughout the year so she could see what they really looked like. Each week, two landforms are introduced, and she chooses one of them to draw herself.

Here's an isthmus in real life ...

... and here's the isthmus Hannah drew.

Here's a butte in real life ...

... and here's a butte Hannah drew. Looks like some guy is sweating trying to climb up it!

The kids know that our next stop is Mexico, and they can't wait to go! Their bags are packed ...

... and waiting by their beds for an early pretend flight to Mexico City.

Our little Indian won't be alone much longer!

And we'll give you all the details in our next weekly report! :)

Feel free to visit the My Father's World Weekly Highlights or Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what others did this week! :)

Show & Tell: MFW K—A-a Apple and N-n Nest

2011-09-09T06:58:00.001-05:00

We've been having fun, fun, fun in Kindergarten this year! I've been doing a terrible job of keeping up with weekly posts, but here are some highlights from Millie's A-a Apple and N-n Nest units. :)

A-a Apple

Millie couldn't wait to get home and watch the VRRROOOMMM: Apple Farming movie we checked out from the library. We stumbled upon it when Hannah was in kindergarten, and it has made its way home with us several times in the past three years.

My kids absolutely adore this movie, as well as the other three in the series. They're loaded with great information, but it's all presented in a very kid-friendly way. We saw how apples are planted, picked, packaged, and even prepared!

We learned that apple trees have to be kept healthy if they're going to bear fruit, and that helped us understand our special words for the week:

If I stay in Jesus, I will have much fruit.

We learned that God doesn't give us fruit like apples and bananas, but instead He gives us fruit like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We discussed how if we don't spend time with God, our spirits are unhealthy, and we won't have much fruit at all. But if we do spend time with God and try to honor Him with our lives, our spirits are healthy and we will produce a lot of this wonderful fruit. We made a little fruit basket and hung it on the kitchen counter, along with pieces of fruit that had the fruits of the spirit printed on them. Every time we observed one of the fruits of the spirit, we would add that fruit to our basket.

Don't let this picture fool you! I think we only had three legitimate pieces of fruit in our basket by week's end!

(If you want to make your own Fruits of the Spirit fruit basket, feel free to download the file here. All we did was print it, cut it out, and staple the basket to brown construction paper.)

For our fun projects this week, we made apple cupcakes (which didn't turn out nearly as cute as the ones I found online, but we had fun anyway!) ...

... cut an apple in half to see the "star" inside ...

...stamped apple prints onto our Special Words to Remember page ...

... made an apple tree with a handprint trunk and fingerprint leaves ...

... and baked some apple pie to take to the Durhams' house for Hannah's United States party!

We had planned to have an apple taste test so the kids could see that each apple has its own unique flavor, but we still haven't gotten around to that. (I have a sneaky suspicion, though, that our eating habits are gonna have to change significantly after all these desserts, so I think an apple diet is in the very near future!)

N-n Nest

This unit was actually not just about nests, but about all different kinds of animal homes. We did spend most of our time focusing on nests, though, because learning how well a mother and father bird care for their eggs and chicks helped Millie understand her special words:

God takes good care of me.

I remember when Hannah did kindergarten, I was amazed to learn that when a bird builds its first nest, it has never seen it done before, yet it knows exactly how to do it. God has created birds so that they know not only how to build a nest, but how to build their particular kind of nest. (Not all nests are built the same way.) There is no explanation for this other than God-given instinct: Birds are created with specific knowledge given to them by their Creator.

Millie and I obviously weren't given this knowledge, which was quite clear when we attempted to build our own nest. :) First, I told her that we were going to pretend to be birds and fly around and gather materials we would need to build our nest. I never expected her to take me literally, but I heard a "tweet, tweet, tweet," and when I looked up, this is what I saw:

She did a good job of "flying around" and gathering supplies. By the time she was finished, she had found some pine needles, some leaves, and a piece of string.

After she collected her supplies, she went and got the watering can and some dirt and mixed the two in a bowl to make mud ... you know, just like the birds do! ;)

The she carefully formed a nest shape ...

... and tapped everything into place ... literally!

Next, she added the mud to hold it all together.

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it!

We let it dry overnight. When we went out to look at it the next day, we saw that all the mud had settled at the bottom and dried, making it rock hard.

It wasn't exactly the soft place we had envisioned for our eggs, so Millie added some grass to it.

Aaaaah, much better! At this point, I considered the project finished and was ready to toss it, but Millie insisted that we put it in the azalea bush in case some bird was looking for a place just like it to move into. :)

I remembered seeing a bird's nest in our Japanese magnolia tree, so I showed it to Millie while we were outside. It really didn't look that impressive. Just a bunch of sticks, really.

Millie remembered reading in one of our library books that birds often use their nests for the spring and summer, then abandon them, so she asked if we could take it down. It was much more impressive when we got the bird's-eye view!

What fascinating little architects they are!

For our fun projects, we made peanut butter and chocolate bird's nests with the Durhams ...

I forgot my camera, so here's a morning after shot. :)

... colored some pictures and matched up animals with their homes ...

... made a tree, complete with a bird's nest and bird ...

... and watched our Kindergarten caterpillar grow, grow, grow!

We also learned that it takes approximately 5 weeks for grapes to turn into raisins. Remember these babies from our S-s Sun unit?!

And we had a very sweet day today when the girls' subjects overlapped and Hannah read Millie a book. Part of Hannah's writing lesson was to be able to identify plot, characters, conflict, and setting. Millie still needed a fiction book for the day, so I told Hannah we could all read the same book and she could tell me the literary elements when she was done.

See this? Reason No. 5,692 why I love to homeschool! :)

In math, we spent some time over the past two weeks working with unconventional methods of measuring length and capacity.

We measured a flip-flop first with blocks ...

... then with paper clips.

And we measured the length and width of the kitchen table with popsicle sticks.

Finally, we measured water using a variety of cups and bowls and compared their capacities.

And in reading, Millie's still plugging away at her Hooked on Phonics lessons. Sometimes I think she does better with her sight words than she does with her blends. She understands the idea of blending, but she still usually has to make each sound before she can say the word. She did tell me the other day that she wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese's for her Reading Reward Day when she finishes this level, so she's very motivated right now and she's working really hard!

Oh, and before I forget, someone had her first day of ballet this week. This morning I was greeted to the sound of a bedroom door opening, little feet dancing down the hallway, and a high-pitched squeal followed by a very excited voice saying, "I get to go to ballet today!" :)

I've already shared with you two sets of Millie's special words to remember in this post. Now I'll leave you with some of my special words to remember. :) Millie was playing in the living room one day, and she looked up at me and said, "Mom, I really love my kindergarten! I bet Christopher loves it, too!" Melt. My. Heart. I love, love, love, love, love this child!

Feel free to visit the My Father's World Weekly Highlights or Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what others did this week! :)

Show & Tell: MFW K—L-l Leaf

2011-09-05T00:24:00.000-05:00

Hmmm ... seems like somewhere along the way I fell off the "weekly posting" wagon and never did get back on! Here are some highlights from Millie's L-l Leaf unit that she finished two weeks ago but that Mama is just now posting. :)

We learned that leaves can help identify trees and plants.

Millie knew that leaves come in different sizes, but she never realized that they come in different shapes, as well. This week she learned that some are lobed, some are toothed, and some are smooth. We gathered a collection of leaves—various sizes and all three shapes—and used green paint to make leaf outlines so she could see their shapes more clearly.

We learned that leaves make food for the rest of the plant.

Leaves take air, water, and sunlight and change them into a special kind of sugar that feeds the rest of the plant. We talked about the way water from the ground travels up into the roots, then through the stems and branches, and finally into the leaves through a series of veins. We did leaf rubbings, which really made the veins stand out!

And I wasn't planning to incorporate this into our L-l Leaf unit, but one of the squash plants in our fall garden just started bearing fruit. We went out to check on it, and Millie was able to see that if the leaves weren't doing their job, the plant wouldn't have been able to stay alive, let alone grow new fruit!

We learned that some leaves change colors in the fall and fall off the trees during winter.

I found a book called Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betty Maestro that was a great resource for this part of our study.

It helped us understand that chlorophyll gives leaves their green color during the spring and summer when the earth receives lots of sunlight; but when fall rolls around and there isn't as much sunlight and, therefore, not as much chlorophyll, a different chemical reaction inside the leaves causes them to display their beautiful autumn colors.

We also read Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, which helped us see what happens to leaves during each of the four seasons.

Millie learned that when leaves change colors, their job of making food for the tree is finished, and they will soon fall to the ground and die. She's my tender-hearted girl, so she was genuinely sad for the leaves when she heard this. :*( However, it did help her to understand her special words for the week:

I will live and grow in Jesus.

We talked about how a leaf can't live if it isn't attached to a plant because it can't get the water and nutrients it needs to sustain life. Millie chose one leaf from a plant to be our independent leaf. This leaf decided it didn't need the plant anymore and could do just fine on its own.

Millie checked on the independent leaf every day to see how it was holding up, but she soon noticed that it wasn't doing so well. First it got very soft and limp, then the edges began to curl under, and finally it began to feel dry. The leaves that stayed attached to the plant were doing just fine because they were getting what they needed, but it was obvious that the rebellious leaf was dying. Here it is after one week:

Then we discussed how we're very similar to the leaves because our spirit will dry up if we don't stay connected to Jesus. I know I say it all the time, but I absolutely love My Father's World. God has truly given Marie Hazell the perfect words to explain these deep truths to young children in such a gentle way.

Some of the fiction books we read during this week included Caps for Sale, A Tree Is Nice, and The Giving Tree.

Caps for Sale was hands-down Millie's favorite book two years ago. She used to act it out during her free time, and we must have read it every day for about 3 months. But would you believe she didn't remember it at all when we read it together during this unit?! She did still like it, though, so that was good. :)

And someone on Pinterest shared these super-cute leaf art ideas from Family Fun magazine ...

... and I thought Millie and I would try to see what we came up with, but we just flat ran out of time. :( I still want to do it one day, though, because it just looks like fun! :)

And I guess I'll leave you with that! ;P

Show & Tell: ECC Introduction

2011-08-22T03:13:00.011-05:00

Hello, bonjour, buenos dias ... g'day, guten tag, konnichiwa ... ciao, shalom, dobrey dyen ...

For those of you who have gone through My Father's World Exploring Countries & Cultures, I have no doubt you just sang those words! And I'm so sorry ... that catchy little tune will probably be in your head for a good two or three days now!

Things have been busy around here, to say the least ... fun, but busy! On Friday we wrapped up the first unit of Exploring Countries and Cultures, our new 3rd grade curriculum. I had heard that the first couple of weeks of ECC would be the toughest, and I'm glad I knew that going into it. We worked long and we worked hard, but by golly, we lived to tell about it! :)

We've been doing our Bible together as a family in the evenings now that Greg isn't coaching. (Let me say it again: Now that Greg isn't coaching. One more time: Now that Greg isn't coaching. Ohhhh, that feels good!) :) This has been so great for a number of reasons. For one thing, we tend to be really hit and miss with family devotions, so this has kind of filled in that gap for us. Also, Greg not only gets to be there for our Bible discussions, but he also gets to lead them. Priceless! And finally, it makes our school day a little shorter. And ECC has been quite a step up from Adventures, so anything we can do to shorten the days is okay with us!

We started out by reading God Speaks Numanggang, which was written by David Hazell, one of the authors of our curriculum. It tells the story of a missionary family who went to live with the Numanggang people and ended up developing a written language for these people and translating the Bible into their written language. It was an excellent resource for emphasizing not only the importance of missionary work in general but of Bible translation in particular.

Although we'll be learning world geography this year, our goal is to understand why we need to know about these other places in our world, which is because there are billions of people who need to hear the good news that, through Jesus, God has made a way for sinful mankind to be restored to Him. To help us maintain our focus, we made a poster with people from all over the world and added John 3:16 to it.

Hannah's cutting pictures of people from around the world out of a National Geographic magazine. I found some for 25 cents each at our Friends of the Library book sale! Big smile!

Once a week, we're getting together with our good friends the Durhams, who are also using ECC this year. Here are Rachel, Hannah, and Cyrus with their posters of people around the world.

We also enjoyed reading several passages from Scripture and reading about various religions from our Window on the World book.

We had a really funny moment during our Bible study one night. Greg has been studying a lot of apologetics lately, and he asked Hannah if she ever questioned whether what we believe is true or maybe thought that one of the other religions had it right instead of us. She said no, and he said, "Because if you ever do, I hope that you'll take the time to examine the Bible and see that . . ." and he went on, and on, and on, and on. Finally, Hannah said, "Dad, I think I'll just stay away from all those other religions. That'll be a lot easier!" :)

We've also really enjoyed Kingdom Tales. I've been grabbing it after I'm done with my dinner and reading it to the family while the kids are finishing up. (Keeps me from going back for seconds and ensures I have a captive audience.) ;) I knew Hannah would enjoy it, but I had no idea Millie would get into it so much. She's jumped right in and been an integral part of our discussions at the end of each chapter.

In geography, we started out the year with a pretest. Hannah scored 0. Yep, she didn't even recognize the good ol' U.S. of A. Even when I held up the map of North America and said, "Are you sure nothing on this map looks familiar? Nothing at all? Not anything?" But on the bright side, there's nowhere to go but up on the posttest, right?!

We mainly focused our attention on map skills during this unit. Hannah colored a map of the world and labeled the continents and oceans.

She hasn't learned about fractions yet—that'll come this year—so I got out the Unifix cubes to show her how much of the earth is covered with water.

Coloring a world map with colored pencils is one thing; coloring one with icing is completely different! (This is one of the benefits of getting together with the Durhams once a week. I can pretty much guarantee we wouldn't have done this if they hadn't come over, but I'm glad we did because the kids had so much fun with it!)

I got a picture of this step, but once we started licking the bowl, my hands were busy and the camera went down! ;)

Here's Hannah coloring Africa.

They took turns labeling the continents and oceans.

The three chefs extraordinaire!

I'm not doing much to supplement ECC this year, but I did stumble across this great little resource in the free bins at The Homeschool Store last year (gotta love it when that happens!), and we put it to good use this week as we learned the names of the continents and oceans. The book has blank maps in it that you can look at while you sing the songs, and by the end of the unit she could identify all seven continents and all five oceans. Yeah!

We did a neat little activity to demonstrate how difficult it is for cartographers to take a round globe and try to make a flat map out of it. First, we drew what was supposed to be the world on a rubber ball. (I never claimed to be an artist. You're about to see why.) ;)

Then Hannah cut the ball into pieces so we could lay it out and turn it into a flat map.

See how there are gaps at the poles? You can get the pieces to connect at the equator, but the poles have to be stretched and, as a result, end up distorted when they make maps. I never noticed it before, but compare Greenland to South America on a map and on a globe and see the difference. Pretty amazing, huh?

Hannah and I got a good chuckle after this project when we looked up and saw this ...

Apparently Millie didn't like it when the whole world fell apart, so she got another ball and tried to put it all back together again. :)

While we were learning about maps, we talked about scale. Afterwards, Hannah measured her room and some of her furniture and made a map. The instructions said to use a 1 foot:1 inch scale, but we didn't have enough room on the paper to do that, so we did 1 foot:1/2 inch instead. And we used graph paper. Because we might as well make it easy on ourselves when we can. :)

Carefully measuring

Transferring it to her map

Attempting to write in cursive! :)

The finished product!

We learned about physical maps and political maps, latitude and longitude, the equator and the way it divides our world into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and the Prime Meridian and way it divides it into Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Then we marked the equator and prime meridian our world map so they would stand out.

Once we had some basic map skills under our belt, it was time to create a map and read a map.

First, we created a map of our area.

We mainly focused on our little town, but we did end up venturing into "the big city" so Hannah could label church and piano.

She made a key to identify all the places she marked on her map ...

... and even tried to make the little highway symbol when it was needed. I've never taught her that symbol, but I'm glad to know hours of riding around in the car ended up being educational!

After we finished the map, the girls took turns giving each other directions to get from one place to another. They really enjoyed this activity!

And Millie made us laugh again when she looked at Hannah's key and asked to go to the earmuff store! :)

Our next project was to read a map. I hid a treasure for each of the girls and marked the hiding spots on a map of our house. They had a lot of fun with this one—and Millie was actually an integral part of figuring out the map!

Each girl had a Ring Pop and 50 cents in her treasure chest.

Here's the map with the hiding places marked.

They grabbed the map and began studying it, but they were stumped at first.

"Maybe if we look at it from a different angle ..."

Millie found hers in her closet.

And Hannah found hers in the bathroom hamper. Success!!

Another fun geography activity we did was making Hands Across the World Paper Dolls. Ours were all North American dolls, and Hannah decorated them like an Indian, an Eskimo, and an American.

Looks like she decorated herself like an Indian, too! :)

We also read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World and gave a shot at making an apple pie. Apparently my baking skills rank right up there with my drawing skills. But it did taste okay ... at least I think it did ... and even if it didn't, the Blue Bell ice cream covered it right up. :)

The filling was delicious!

This is all I have to offer. If you want to see a pretty apple pie, visit Erin's blog! :)

In science, we started off by learning what an ecosystem is. We made a backyard habitat so we could observe the flora and fauna that are growing right under our noses.

I suppose it would have been better if she weren't squatting inside the habitat but, you know, sometimes you don't think of these things until after the fact.

This is the first thing she noticed, and she actually thought that's all that she would find in her square. They were literally all over the place!

After looking a little more closely, she found a feather.

Then she noticed these little white flowers down in the grass. There was a heavy sprinkling of them, but you really had to be looking to notice them because they're so small.

And finally she noticed some leaves that were caught under the grass. I told her this could be shelter for a bug, but she thought it would make better food.

We also learned what a niche is, and while we were at the Durhams' house, we set up an earthworm habitat so we could oberve an earthworm's niche.

We added the soil, the sand, the oats, and a few dried leaves for good measure.

Next step ... add the worms!

All those fishing trips with Grandpa paid off ... she's handling her own worms!

Here is our worm habitat 9 days later. The soil is somewhat mixed, and you can definitely see tunnels where the worms have worked through the soil.

Time to let them go. We were curious to see if we had any survivors.

WOO HOO! Five of the six made it out alive! Only one casualty!

The girls put them in the garden so they could help make the soil more fertile.

We also did some bark rubbings and collected some leaf samples to try to become more familiar with our trees. I learned from Pauline's experience and did it right in the comfort of our own yard. ;)

We did a bark rubbing for this holly tree ...

... this pine tree ...

... and this unidentified tree. I really want to be a Charlotte Mason kind of a girl, but I'm just plain not. Fortunately, we have an elderly neighbor who knows all the different trees in this area, so we'll ask him what it is next time we see him.

Here are the leaves we collected. Again, we have one mystery leaf we need to ask Mr. Taggart about.

We also learned about the water cycle. The kids are pretty familiar with that already, thanks to the Magic School Bus. But Hannah was surprised to learn that plants can release water from their leaves. We made what is basically like a terrarium so she could see the water cycle in action.

Here she's adding grass to the soil in the jar.

We put the lid on and placed it in the windowsill.

You can see a few water droplets have already formed on the inside of the jar.

In math, Hannah is working on multiplication and division right now. She pretty much has her x0, x1, x2, x5, and x10 facts down, but we're working on x3 and x4 right now. We did get out the Unifix cubes the other day to help her solve a problem where she was divinding by 4. I honestly don't understand why subtraction is so much harder than addition and division is so much harder than multiplication, but I'm learning to just be patient and help her find a way to solve it.

And last but not least, we have really enjoyed our writing the past two weeks. We discussed how using descriptive verbs can make your sentences more lively. We started off with "The animals came onto the ark," and Hannah had to replace came with more descriptive verbs. Millie got in on the action, too, and they ran with it. (Pun totally intended).

They decided that animals could hop onto the ark.

Or they could run onto the ark.

Or they could even slither onto the ark!

Hannah really seems to be enjoying her Sonlight writing, and I'm sooo thankful it's a good fit for her. The first week of school, she was to describe an animal using the five senses. She chose to describe an imaginary animal called Wierdyduck. Here's what she wrote:

Wierdyduck has a long skinny tail. He makes a squeaky quack with his pelican beak. His blue body is smooth. He likes buttery carrots and the smell of fried fish!

This week we talked about similes, and she was to take last week's writing and incorporate similes into it. This is what she came up with:

Wierdyduck's tail is as skinny as string. He squeaks like a mouse. His body is as smooth as an eel. He thinks that vegetables are as good as ice cream.

And somehow in the midst of all the back-to-school craziness, we managed to squeeze in a birthday party for Hannah and one of her best friends, Kailian.

Here are the birthday girls, Kailian and Hannah.

We've had fun these past couple weeks, but they have been busy! Only 32 more weeks until summer! ;)

Show & Tell: MFW K—M-m Moon

2011-08-21T18:04:00.007-05:00

Mmm-hmm. Y'all thought I was kiddin', didn't you? I know I've been bombarding you with posts this week, but that's the way it works when you're an inconsistent blogger. :)

Last Thursday, Millie finished her M-m Moon unit in kindergarten. Here are some of the highlights.

We learned that the moon doesn't make its own light, but it reflects the light of the sun.

We learned that the moon is made of dust and rock and has no light of its own. To demonstrate this, we wrapped a ball in aluminum foil and went inside my closet. Seems to be the trend these days, huh? Remember we did a project in my closet last week, too. Which can only lead to one question ... does this make us closet homeschoolers?!

This is what the ball looked like in the closet with the lights off.

It had no light of its own.

Then we shined a light on it and ... voila!

Our "moon," which we just saw didn't have any light of its own, suddenly reflected the light of our "sun."

This helped us to understand our special words for the week:

I am the light of the world.

Jesus is ultimately the light of the world (we learned that last week), but when He shines His light on us, other people are able to look at us and see His light. As they see His light shining on us, they know He's really there.

We learned that the moon doesn't always look the same.

We read The Moon Seems to Change by Franklyn Branley and Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle.

We discussed that, even though the moon seems to change shape, it's really always round. It just looks like it gets smaller because, as it travels around the earth, we see less and less of its lighted-up side that faces the sun; then it looks like it gets bigger because we see more and more of its lighted-up side as it comes back.

We used chalk to color the phases of the moon on black construction paper and put them in order.

That was fun, but it was a lot more fun when we took Mrs. Yvette's suggestion and made them out of Oreos!

We learned that the moon is much smaller than the sun.

We shrunk the universe waaaaay down and saw that the moon is smaller than the earth and much, much smaller than the sun.

In this model, the sun is a whopping 4'4", the earth (blue circle on the right) is a tiny 1/2", and the moon (white circle on the left) is a super-tiny 1/8". Wowsers!

So why do the sun and the moon look like they're the same size when we see them in the sky? We went for a walk with our friends Elijah and Christopher to find out. :)

If we really lived in a universe with a 4'4" sun, a 1/2" earth, and a 1/8" moon, the moon would be 14 inches away from the earth. That's how far apart we glued them on our paper. But the sun would be a staggering 461 feet away from the earth! So we taped our sun to the mailbox and walked 461 feet with our earth and moon. When we reached our destination and looked back, sure enough, the moon and the sun looked the same size!

See the sun waaaay back there in the distance? It was kind of hard to see so I circled it in red and added a huge yellow arrow.

We also added to our Kindergarten caterpillar ...

... and we sang a sun and moon song to help remember how we measure days, months, and years. (Sung to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell.)

The Earth spins around,

Once a day, every day,

The Earth spins around.

The moon goes 'round the Earth,

Once a month, every month,

The moon goes 'round the Earth.

The Earth goes 'round the sun,

Once a year, every year,

The Earth goes 'round the sun.

And believe it or not, Millie actually got to practice handwriting in shaving cream last week! Yes, this is my fourth year to homeschool, and we just did shaving cream handwriting for the first time! She doesn't like to get messy, so I wasn't sure how much she would like it, but she loved it!

Another fun week of learning together!

Oh ... and just in case I'm not the only inconsistent blogger out there and someone else would like to award herself the Inconsistent Blogger Award, she should know that it's perfectly okay to grab it and display it proudly on her own blog! ;)

Until next time ... and no telling when that'll be! ;)

Show & Tell: MFW K—S-s Sun

2011-08-20T15:14:00.004-05:00

Last week, Millie finished her S-s Sun unit. I did MFW K with my oldest three years ago, and I want to hang my head in shame when I go back and read some of my posts. Apparently I thought she'd never learn about the sun again before she left for college, so I tried to be very thorough with her lessons—too thorough for a 5-year-old. I've learned since then, though, and now follow the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Silly!!

Here are some of the highlights from our week. :)

We learned that the sun gives us light.

The light from the sun helps us to see. Otherwise, we'd stumble around and get lots of bumps and bruises—we'd be hurt time and time again! This helped us to understand our special words for the week:

Jesus is the light of the world.

When we take time to read His Word and obey it, it gives us guidance. It helps us see the "right" way to go and helps us avoid a lot of unnecessary pain in life.

We learned that the sun gives us heat.

We did a little experiment to see just how much effect the sun's heat has on our world. We took two plates and put an ice cube on each plate. One was placed in the shade under our patio cover. The other was on the table by the pool in direct sunlight.

When Millie went to check on the ice cubes after about 15 minutes, she found that the one in the shade was smaller than its original size, but it hadn't melted completely.

The one by the pool, however, was totally gone, and there was a puddle of water in its place. The heat from the sun caused it to melt faster than the one in the shade.

We also put a bowl of grapes in a sunny windowsill to see the effect of the sun's heat on them.

They haven't completely turned into raisins, but they're definitely well on their way. We'll keep them there for a couple more weeks and see how long it takes them to totally dehydrate.

We learned that the sun helps us measure hours.

We read Bear Shadow by Frank Asch and The Biggest Shadow in the Zoo by Jack Kent and talked about the way shadows change throughout the day.

Then we used a pencil, some clay, and a piece of posterboard to make a sundial in the backyard. We didn't mark it every hour on the hour, but we had enough marks by the end of the day to see how the shadows changed.

Here's Millie making our second mark of the day. All of our clocks at home are either digital or have Roman numerals, so I pulled out a clock manipulative I had left over from Hannah's CLE Math days and used that to show Millie how to tell time to the hour.

Here she is making the last mark of the day. She was able to see how the shadows moved from one side of the pencil to the other as the sun moved across the sky.

We learned that the sun helps us measure days.

Before I taught Millie how the sun really causes day and night, I wanted to show her how people used to think it worked. We got out the inflatable globe that came with ECC and taped a piece of paper with a "W" on it to North America and one with an "E" on it to Asia. Then we went into my closet and shut the door. Before you think I've gone totally mad, let me assure you that that's not where we usually do school! We just needed a dark place to go! ;) I moved the flashlight from the E to the W to show her that people used to think Earth stood still while the sun moved around it from east to west.

Then we read an excellent book called Under the Sun by Ellen Kandoian. (We came out of the closet for this part. You can only take it for so long before it starts to feel a little claustrophobic!)

In this book, a little girls asks her mom where the sun goes when she goes to bed. Her mother tells her some of the different places it goes while she is sleeping. As we read the book, we found each place on the globe and turned our globe until that spot was in the sun's (aka flashlight's) light. When the sun was shining on Asia, we looked at the other side of our globe and saw that it was dark—night—in North America where the little girl lived.

We learned that the sun helps us measure years.

We moved our coffee table out of the living room one night and put a lamp (aka sun) in its place. We turned all the lights off, turned the lamp on, and gave Millie the globe so she could review how the sun makes day and night.

We told her that the earth not only spins around, but it also goes around the sun, making day and night, day and night, day and night over and over again as it travels. We told her to run around the sun and make days and nights as she went. (What's that? Permission to run in the house??!) So she picked up the globe and ran around the sun, spinning the globe on her way around.

When she got back to where she started, Greg yelled, "Happy New Year!" He told her that when the earth goes all the way around the sun, a year has passed. We gave the girls party horns to blow every time Millie made a new year, so things got pretty loud that night.

Some other fun activities were ...

Making the letter "S" out of Play-Doh.

Using Cuisinaire rods to complete our letter "S" page.

Writing our special words on a sheet of paper ...

... and then painting it!

Adding the very first circle to our Kindergarten caterpillar.

And praying for the Safwa people and learning how to say "sun" in Spanish.

I love that we get to play together and call it school! :)

If you'd like to use our badges to make your own Kindergarten caterpillar, our handwriting pages with the Special Words to Remember, or our poster with the Spanish, Special Words, and People Who Need the Bible, please do!! (Just click on the links to download them.) I'm all about pooling resources so we can all have the best year possible!

Blessings!

Show & Tell: MFW K—Creation

2011-08-20T12:26:00.002-05:00

On the first day of Kindergarten,

My student said to me,

"Mom, take me to

the library!"

It's true. When Millie turned 5 in February, we tried to get her her very own library card, but we found out that our local library requires children not only to be 5 years old but also to be officially in Kindergarten.

Well, stink!

BUT ... apparently that made quite an impression on my Millie because she woke up early on her first day of school, got all dressed up, and asked if we could go to the library to get her a library card. Not exactly what I had planned for the day, but ... um ... yeah, we can go!!

Signing her card to make it all official

One proud cardholder!!

Millie was eager to start her Kindergarten year, so I decided to do the creation unit with her before our first official week of school. I'm glad we did it that way because it gave her my undivided attention for a couple of weeks and it gave me a gentle transition back into school mode. :)

Our focus during this unit was learning how God created the world.

If anyone is looking for resources to supplement the Creation unit, I highly recommend The Creation Story for Children (beautifully illustrated!) and a companion teacher's guide called God Made the World & Me. Actually, we'll be using the teacher's guide throughout the year as we study various units.

We learned that on Day 1, God made light and separated light from darkness. I finally broke down and bought a prism, and the kids had fun using the prism to separate light into different colors.

We sang the "light" verse from our creation song. (Tune: Are You Sleeping?)

On Day 1, On Day 1,
God did make, God did make,
Light to shine in darkness, Light to shine in darkness,
It was good, It was good.

Millie worked on a creation book throughout the unit. I wish I had taken a picture of her while she was working on it every day, but I only got the camera out a couple of times. Here is her Day 1 page.

On Day 2, we learned that God created the sky and put some water above the sky and some below it.

We added the "sky" verse onto our creation song.

On Day 2, On Day 2,
God did make, God did make,
Lots of sky and water, Lots of sky and water,
It was good, It was good.

Here is Millie's creation page for Day 2. I found some sort of metallic blue ribbon back when Hannah did K, and we used what was left for the water on Millie's page. The coulds are made of cotton balls.

On Day 3, we learned that God made land and put trees, plants, and flowers on it.

We added the "trees and flowers" verse onto our creation song.

On Day 3, On Day 3,
God did make, God did make,
Many trees and flowers, Many trees and flowers,
It was good, It was good.

Here is the page Millie made on Day 3 for her creation book. The land and tree are both made of construction paper (we just holepunched red and orange construction paper to make the fuit), and the water is made of the same ribbon we used for Day 2. The flowers are foam stickers I found in the kids' art bin.

On Day 4 we learned that God made the sun, moon, and stars. I love taking the time to really look at the days of creation and think it all through. Some people believe that God used evolution to create the world and that his "days" are simply "periods of time." But when you stop to think about the fact that He had already put plants, flowers, and trees on the earth, how in the world could they live for thousands of years without sunlight?! But I digress ...

We added the "sun, moon, and stars" verse onto our creation song.

On Day 4, On Day 4,
God did make, God did make,
The sun and moon and stars, The sun and moon and stars,
It was good, It was good.

Finally, here's a picture of my Millie-Girl while she's working on her project! :) She painted a yellow sun and a white moon, then she painted some white dots for stars and added some silver star stickers.

On Day 5, we learned that God made the birds and the sea creatures.

We added the "fish and birds" verse onto our creation song.

On Day 5, On Day 5,
God did make, God did make,
All the fish and birdies, All the fish and birdies,
It was good, It was good.

And here's Millie with her Day 5 creation page. WOO HOO ... I got her working again! :) We used the same metallic ribbon for water and added some sea creature stickers. Then she used a marker to draw birds flying in the air.

Check out that look of concentration!

On Day 6, we learned that God made land animals and his crown creation, man.

We added the "animals and man" verse to our creation song.

On Day 6, On Day 6,
God did make, God did make,
All the other animals,
All the other animals,
God made man, Woman too.

Here is Millie's Day 6 creation page. I had a stack of National Geographic magazines, and she went through them and cut out animal pictures. I had to find an Adam & Eve picture online ... none of those in National Geographic! ;)

And finally, on Day 7 we learned that God rested and enjoyed His creation, setting a model for us.

We added the final verse to our creation song.

On Day 7, On Day 7,
God did rest, God did rest,
All the work was finished, all the work was finished,
It was good, very good!

Here is the page Millie made for Day 7 of her creation book.

She also worked on a creation poster throughout the unit. Each picture was shaped like a number, and in it were things that God created on that day. When she added the last number, I hung it above the window in the school room.

When Hannah was in Kindergarten, we had a creation snack for each day of creation. But Millie, my poor second child, doesn't get that luxury! ;) Gotta keep it simple these days! :) So instead, we had a creation party at the end of the unit. We sang our creation song, and with each verse, there was some activity that went with it.

After we sang the Day 1 verse in the dark, she turned on the kitchen lights for us.

After we sang the Day 2 verse, she put a glass of water at the table for everyone in our family.

After we sang the Day 3 verse, she brought a plate of fruit to the table.

After we sang the Day 4 verse, she brought some star-shaped cheese to the table. We used a star cookie cutter she had in her play kitchen to cut it out. :)

After we sang the Day 5 verse, she brought a plate of goldfish to the table.

After we sang the Day 6 verse, she brought a plate of animals crackers to the table.

And finally, after she sang the Day 7 verse, we were all able to sit down and rest. The girls also blew party horns to celebrate because it was very good.

We had a lot of fun with this creation unit. It was a very gentle way to ease back into the school year!

So what exactly HAVE we been doing all summer?

2011-08-19T17:49:00.009-05:00

I figured I probably wouldn't blog as much during the summer, but I never dreamed I'd take a 3-month hiatus! So what exactly did we do all summer long that kept me away from my beloved computer?

To begin with, we put the girls in separate bedrooms. Hannah is at an age where she just wants to read quietly in her room. And Millie is at an age where she just wants to play not-quietly in hers. You can imagine the heated exchanges we had with two very different agendas for the same space. Let's just say there were lots of fireworks in our house! I decided to ditch my old philosophy of "building character by sharing a space" and adopt a new one of "peace at all costs!"

Fortunately, Greg's mom and dad took the girls for five days so we could tackle this project. And let me tell ya, it was one. huge. project. I've always kept all of my school stuff in the guest bedroom closet, and I knew I had a lot, but I didn't know I had that much! It's amazing the things a homeschool mom can accumulate! But since the girls were going into separate bedrooms, we had to give up our guest bedroom, which meant I had to give up my school closet. (I really wish I had taken a picture of it before we emptied it, or even with stacks all over the house while I was trying to decide where to put everything! Stuff was literally everywhere!) Greg built a cabinet for the school room last year that came in very handy, and he made two bookshelves to match it this summer so I would have a place for all my gear.

This is the cabinet he made last year. My one request was for doors so I could hide the mess. I had no idea at the time how handy they would be!

And these are the ones he made this summer. I couldn't decide whether I wanted doors on these or not, so I finally told him not to worry about it. Good thing ... I had no idea I had so many books piled into that closet!

We worked ridiculously long hours while the girls were gone to get it all done, but they were in for a real surprise when they came home!

This is Hannah's room. She got to keep the bunk beds because her room is a little smaller. We still need to paint her dresser ... one of these days. :)

This desk used to be her great-grandfather's. Greg painted it white and found pink knobs on clearance at a local business for $1 each!

This is what she loves most about her room. This reading light used to have a plastic clamp, basically like a chip clip, to attach it to the bed. The clamp broke, so I was ready to throw it away, but Greg was able to salvage it. I love that man!

Even this little "table" next to her bed is a trash-to-treasure creation. It's the old framework from their toy bins. The bins are setting on shelves in their closets, so I was going to throw away the frame. But Greg took it to the shop, cut some wood to fit on the top of it, and made a little nightstand out of it. It needs to be painted, but still, that's pretty cool!

Millie has more toys than Hannah, so she got the bigger bedroom (which both girls used to share). She got what used to be the guest bed, but we added some new bedding to make it look like a little girl's room. And we even found some that was yellow so we didn't have to paint! Score one for Mom and Dad!

Another biggie for our family this summer was that we became a m— we became a mini— we became a minivan family. (There, I said it.) I reluctantly gave up this car, which was my dream car when I bought it back in 2000—Hey! Don't laugh!—yes, I gave up this car, which has 204,000 miles on it and has never given me a lick of trouble...

... for this minivan.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am very grateful for this vehicle and I really do love it. But there's just something about driving a minivan that's an admission to the entire world that you're not cool anymore. Not that I've been cool for, oh, a good 20 years now, but still. In fact, I thought I had reached the pinnacle of uncoolness...but then I went on vacation and bought one of these.

Yep. A fanny pack. It was at the exact moment that I paid for this fanny pack that I realized I had far surpassed simply admitting that I wasn't cool. What I was doing was equivalent to climbing to the top of a very high mountain, grabbing a bullhorn, and yelling at the top of my lungs that I'm not cool anymore. But I've survived it all. And it turns out that both minivans and a fanny packs are tremendously practical items that every woman should own. :)

Speaking of vacation ... this was the first summer since having kids that Greg and I decided to take a family vacation just for the sake of taking a family vacation. We usually go on a big vacation every other year, but it's always to visit family. This time just the four of us headed to Branson, MO for the week. We went to Silver Dollar City in the mornings, and when we couldn't take the heat anymore, we headed to White Water. There are no words to describe how good it was for the health of our family to just get away and enjoy each other without all the distractions of everyday life.

At the entrance to Silver Dollar City

Millie stuck to the carousel when we first got there, but she got braver and braver throughout the week.

Here I am on the kiddie roller coaster with Millie. Yeah, I'm all smiles now, but I was screaming louder than anyone once it started going. I am the world's biggest wimp!!

After that, Millie had to ride with Hannah. Once was enough for Mama!

I did get brave enough to ride this by the end of the week, but only because my 5-year-old guaranteed me it would be okay. And Hannah moved back one seat every time she rode. Daredevil!

Millie enjoyed the toddler area ...

... Hannah tolerated the toddler area. ;)

The one day we said the kids could eat at the park. We nearly hyperventilated when we saw the food prices, but fortunately the kids were easy on us! Millie chose popcorn ...

... Hannah chose a large pretzel ...

... and Mom and Dad split this ginormous eclair!

Headed to White Water to cool off!

Hannah at the bottom of a 7-story water slide! This is what happens when Dads take their children and Moms don't know where they are. I never would have allowed her to go down it! But look ... she made it out alive!

Hannah coming out of one of the water slides.

At the Sight & Sound Theater to see Noah: The Musical. It was A-MAZ-ING!!! Our whole family enjoyed it!

And the best thing about this summer was that we got Greg for an extended time! He decided he's missing out on too much at home, so he decided to quit coaching! WOO HOO!! He typically has to go back mid-July for football, but this year Monday was his first day back. Mid-August! A whole extra month! It has been wonderful having him around more, and I realize how blessed we are not only that his job allows him to have so much time off but also just that he chose us! He could have played the numbers game and said we needed the extra money, but instead he's choosing to trust God to be our Jehovah-Jireh. I love this man!

So there you have it ... three months' worth of posts all wrapped up in one! I'm thinking of making up a new blog award to give myself. It would be called the Inconsistent Blogger Award. What do you think??

Introducing ...

2011-08-15T08:47:00.001-05:00

This week I'm linking up with Heart of the Matter's Not Back to School Blog Hop—and I'm even doing it on time! That's a first! :) This week is Student Photo Week.

This is the first year I'll have two official students! Yikes!

Meet Millie. I don't know how it happened, but somehow she's old enough for kindergarten!

This year she'll be learning all about God's creation as she goes through the My Father's World Kindergarten program.

She's my fun-loving, super-social, super-witty girly-girl!

And this is Hannah, my 3rd grader. Third grade already?! Yep, third grade already! Time does fly.

This year she'll study world geography with My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures.

Hannah is my paradox: She's a daredevil who loves to be where the action is, but she's happiest when she's in her room by herself with her nose in a book. Crazy combination, right?

I'm nervous about having two students for the first time, but as I said in my curriculum post a couple of days ago, I'm choosing to believe that my God is greater than my fears or my inadequacies, trusting completely that He doesn't call the equipped but equips the called. To Him alone be the glory!

Preparing for MFW K

2011-08-14T18:49:00.004-05:00

I've been wanting to write a "helpful" Kindergarten post for quite a while now but just haven't gotten around to it. Shocking, I know. ;) But when I received a message from a fellow MFW'er looking for Kindergarten help the other day, it was just the kick in the pants I needed to get it done.

1. How in the world are you supposed to organize everything you need for Kindergarten?
Melanie from Treasures Unseen wrote an excellent post explaining how she organized her Kindergarten materials that has helped many homeschooling moms. You can read that post here. I chose to organize my materials using the method suggested in the teacher's manual. I just made 27 file folders (one for each unit, plus one for the introductory creation unit), and that worked well for me. As I came across a book, poem, craft idea, puzzle, etc., that I wanted to use for a certain unit, I would just slip it into the corresponding file folder. Also, if I stumbled upon a library book I thought would work well for a future unit, I would write the title down in the file folder itself. Then when that unit finally rolled around, I pulled out my file folder and had all of my resources (or sometimes a list of resources to get from the library) ready and waiting.

2. Music and the Cuisinaire Rod Alphabet Book aren't scheduled. When am I supposed to do those?
If I could go back in time, the first thing I would do after recieving my teacher's manual in the mail is go through it and pencil in the music and cuisinaire rod lessons once a week. (This is only for Deluxe package users). It doesn't matter which day you do them. Day 6 works well for a lot of people because it's already a light day, so that might be a good option. But choose a day and pencil in the music and cuisinaire rod lessons so you don't get to the end of the year and say, "Aw, crud, I meant to do those!" Hear the voice of experience there? ;)

3. I can't figure out this stinkin' teacher's manual! What's up with all the flipping back and forth?!
If only I had a quarter for every time I've heard or read that statement! It's really, really, really not that bad once you get the hang of it. Basically, the reading instructions are in one section of the teachers manual, the math instructions are in a second section, and the science and Bible are in a third section. The math routine is the same every day (craft stick, hundred chart, calendar), and the reading routine is the same every week (Day 1 is always the same, Day 2 is always the same, etc.) Believe it or not, you'll actually get in a groove and this will become second nature to you, so you won't be spending much time in those sections of your TM. The part you'll spend the most time in every week is the science and Bible part because it's different every day. I have heard of people putting a post-it note or a paper clip to mark each section of the teacher's manual. This might be helpful if you find yourself flipping back and forth a lot.

4. Where do you store your Picture Cards?
There are probably as many answers to this question as there are MFW Kindergarten users, but here's the system I used that worked well for me. I spent $3.99 and bought a picture box from Hobby Lobby. (Actually, that's not completely true. I spent $7.98 and bought two because I also used one for the Number Cards. But more about that in a minute.) I also bought a box of invitation envelopes (4 3/4" x 6 1/2 ") from Office Depot, which I kept inside the picture box. Every week, Millie would cut apart her picture cards.

When they were all cut apart, she would take a new envelope out of the box and tape the letter card to the front of it.

Then she would put the rest of the cards inside the envelope and put the envelope inside the box along with all the others. This way the Picture Cards were always right there together when we needed to use them.

4. Where do you store your Number Cards?

I put my Number Cards in a second picture box. Now, about the Number Cards themselves ... the teacher's manual suggests writing the number of the week on an index card. We tried that, but Millie started getting her 2 and 5 and her 6 and 9 confused because she couldn't tell if she was holding it upside down. So I ended up making some printable Number Cards that have an outdoor background so it would be obvious if she was holding them upside down. You can download those Number Cards here if you'd like to use them. They're formatted for Avery 5388 printable index cards, but if you don't happen to have those handy, you can just grab some scissors and do it the old-fashioned way! ;)

When we would do the Math Page, I would take the Number Cards out of the picture box and fan them out face down so she could draw one.

Then she would look at the number and draw that many objects on her paper. (As our year progressed, we would sometimes stamp that many times or add that many stickers. It starts getting a little monotonous when you try to draw 17 of something!)

5. What other resources are available?

My Father's World Message Board

The best resource I have found is the message board at the My Father's World web site. If you're looking for encouragement or clarification on a project in the book, you can post a question on the General board. If you're looking for additional ideas to enhance your unit, check out the Kindergarten Ideas archive.

Printables from Mama Jenn

Mama Jenn made some great handwriting practice sheets to go along with each unit. They have the Words to Remember along the top with handwriting guide lines at the bottom of the page. The middle is left blank so your child can illustrate it however he chooses. I love, love, love the idea of these practice sheets. (Along with all of Mama Jenn's stuff! If you're not familiar with her site, you really should be!) But I don't think Millie is quite ready to do the handwriting on her own yet, so I made some similar pages with the letters in pale gray at the bottom so the students can trace them. If your child is ready to write her letters on her own, stick with the ones Mama Jenn created. But if she needs a little more guidance, here's a link to mine.

Badges for a Kindergarten Caterpillar

When we went through Kindergarten the first time, we had to create our own badges. Now they're included with the student sheets. We like the ones we made on the computer several years ago, though, because they're circle-shaped, and we put them together along the top of our bulletin board so they make a Kindergarten Caterpillar. It's a great way to review the Words to Remember every week. Millie has only completed one unit so far this year, but here's what her caterpillar looks like so far.

If you'd like to download our Kindergarten badges, click here. (The caterpillar face is on the last page of the document.)

And here's a picture of what the badge looks like as it's being worn. We took a short piece of grosgrain ribbon (around 2 1/2 to 3 inches) and folded it in half. Then we stapled it to the back of the badge, folded side up, so it hung over the edge and made a little tab that a safety pin could be attached to.

From Akebu to Zapotec and Bulletin Board Poster for Each Unit
Because Hannah is going through ECC this year, we're adding a book to Millie's Kindergarten that has an ECC feel to it. It's called From Akebu to Zapotec: A Book of Bibleless Peoples, and I can't recommend it highly enough!

It goes through the alphabet and, one letter at a time, introduces us to 26 people groups that don't have the Bible in their language. I made a poster (just a letter-size piece of paper) for each unit that has the Spanish word for the unit, the Words to Remember, and the name of a Bibleless people group that begins with the letter of the week. The pictures on each week's poster are the same as those on the badges. Here's the poster that's currently on our bulletin board for the S-s Sun unit.

Click here to download the weekly posters file.

The My Father's World Blog Roll
Lainie has done a great job of hosting the My Father's World Blog Roll for the past three years. It's always fun to connect with families who are currently in the same year as you, as well as finding families who have already blogged the year you're working on.

I know there are a ton of other resources out there, but these are the ones I wanted to make sure to include. Hopefully this post has helped someone out there. :) If you have any questions about any of my resources or just about the Kindergarten program in general, feel free to ask away. I love making bloggy friends! :)

Our 2011-2012 Curriculum

2011-08-14T03:18:00.007-05:00

It's that time of year again! Homeschool moms all across the nation have been thumbing through mountainous stacks of curriculum catalogs, reading blog after blog after endless blog, and downing one cup of coffee after another while memorizing the Well-Trained Mind message boards, all in the name of finding that one curriculum that will not only make their children smart enough for a full scholarship to the college of their choice but will also give them a heart for Jesus and sharing His love with everyone they meet. If only it were that simple! I haven't found a curriculum that will do all of that yet, but I have found what works for our family. Here it is. :)

Hannah—3rd grade

My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures

We've used My Father's World from the start, and it has been a great fit for our family. This year we'll be using Exploring Countries and Cultures, which includes Bible, world geography, science, music, and art. As we travel around the world in geography this year, we'll not only learn how to find our target countries on a map but we'll also get to know about their cultures—how people in those countries live, what they eat, what they wear, what kind of music they listen to, and most importantly, what they believe about God. In science, we'll learn about the ecosystems of each of the continents—what the climate is like in the different regions and what kinds of plants and animals we could expect to find there. In Bible, we'll study the book of Matthew throughout the year. And as we travel to each new continent, we'll learn about the sin-scarred people who live there who desperately need to hear about our loving God and how He provided a way for fellowship with Him to be restored. We'll also read a biography of a missionary who traveled there to tell those people the good news. In music and art, we'll sing songs and make crafts that are related to the area we're studying.

My goal for this year is that my children will walk away understanding that the world is a much bigger place than what they see on a daily basis. I want them to understand that God has created an amazingly diverse planet with all kinds of people, but those people all need to hear about Jesus. I pray that they will be fascinated by the people that we study, that they will desire to pray for them, that their hearts will ache when they learn about some of the lies that people believe, that the Great Commission will come to life for them and they will understand the importance of supporting missions. Lofty goals, I know, but that's my heart.

We'll also be reading aloud from Hillyer's A Child's Geography of the World and Missionary Stories with the Millers to supplement our studies.

Spelling

I thought long and hard about whether to stick with All About Spelling for another year or go ahead and switch to Spelling Power. In the end, I decided that all of All About Spelling's rules and built-in review lays a good foundation that will help us when we do finally transition to Spelling Power. One strike against All About Spelling is the tiles. We can't stand the tiles! So I made a pretty neat PowerPoint that accomplishes the same thing, only it does it more neatly and more quickly, both of which we like. :) We'll work our way through Levels 3 and 4 of All About Spelling this year. If time allows, we'll do Level 5 as well, but we'll just have to play that one by ear.

Math

We're going to stick with Singapore Math again. We're finishing up 2B right now, and hopefully we'll get through 3A and 3B this year, but again, we'll have to play it by ear. We're also adding in some Life of Fred books (Did you know he now has an elementary series?!!) and the Singapore Intensive Practice books. Hannah's not just real thrilled about the Intensive Practice books, but it really stretches her and makes her apply the math she's learning, and both Greg and I think that's a good thing. Singapore is known for its mental math component, and I have to say ... it works! However, Greg isn't quite as enamored with it as Hannah and I are. As a high school math teacher, he wants to see the work so he can know where she's messing up when she misses a problem. So he's requiring her to show a little more work than she would care to (and more than I would require), but I'm not complaining! I love having his input since he's the resident expert in that field. ;)

Grammar

This was one of Hannah's favorite subjects last year, so we're sticking with Rod & Staff. I've heard this described as "rigorous," but I haven't found that to be true—at least not yet. :) It definitely gets the job done, but I would say it seems to be a good fit for the intended age. We had a lot of success last year doing it orally, so we're going to do that again this year, with the exception of the worksheets, which she will complete and put in her notebook.

Writing

Ultimately, my goal is to use Institute for Excellence in Writing. However, I have a child who hates the physical act of handwriting, so I want to kind of ease her into writing. My friend Fawn showed me her daughter's Sonlight writing assignments (part of the Sonlight Language Arts program), and I knew it would be a great introduction to writing for Hannah. The assignments are very fun and they allow the kids to use their imaginations, but they somehow manage to tackle some pretty hefty writing assignments. By the time she's done, she will have written narrative essays, persuasive essays, poetry, and book reviews; and she will have covered topics that are normally covered in reading, such as alliteration, similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, etc. I'm really excited about adding this to our curriculum this year, but at the same time, I just don't know how she'll react to all the handwriting that goes along with creative writing. Any prayer would be greatly appreciated!

Reading

There's a chance that we may possibly use CLE Reading this year, but I'm still not completely sure about this one. I went ahead and purchased it, but once it came in, I began having second thoughts. Between the reading we do for My Father's World and the language arts she's doing with Sonlight, it kind of felt like overkill. It also seemed a little like busywork, which made me wonder if it would suck the love of reading right out from under her. On the other hand, it has a fairly strong missions component to it (which kind of goes along with our theme for the year), it can only help her less-than-stellar handwriting and spelling to improve, and she just loves those good old-fashioned, wholesome stories. I ended up showing her the materials and letting her decide, and she chose to do them. So far she's enjoying it, but if it ends up becoming a chore, I think it will be an easy one to let go.

Cursive

For handwriting we'll be using Cheerful Cursive. I was so excited when I found out about this book! The lessons are short and fun, with various characters such as Bumps, Wags, and Loopy placing themselves on the letters to teach your child how to form them correctly. The book includes practice for both print and cursive writing, as well as grammar reviews, and it also includes practice reading a variety of cursive handwriting styles since not everyone writes the same.

Spanish

We're going to stick with The Learnables for Spanish this year. I thought we'd end up switching to Rosetta Stone since they lowered the price to only an arm rather than an arm and a leg. ;) But The Learnables is working for us for now and Hannah enjoys it, so why fix it if it isn't broken, know what I mean?

Homemaking

And finally, I am determined to finish the Lessons in Responsibility book we started back in 1st grade! (Anyone else have something like that that you just can't seem to get through for some reason?) She seriously loves this book, so it shouldn't be hard to get through it, but for whatever reason we didn't make much progress last year. Plus, I already own the Level 2 book, so I really need to get Level 1 finished!

Millie—Kindergarten

My Father's World Kindergarten

Millie will continue to use My Father's World Kindergarten this year. She did the phonics and math portions of the program for Pre-K last year, but the Bible truths are so precious that I wanted her to be a little older so she would understand them more fully. Marie Hazell (author of My Father's World) has done a masterful job of interweaving the Bible and science lessons and explaining them in a way that is perfect for young children to understand.

We'll do the math portion of the program again this year to really reinforce our Base 10 system, counting to 100, and calendar skills. The program also includes Bible, science, music, and art. We've enjoyed all of our studies with My Father's World, but Kindergarten definitely has a soft spot in my heart.

Reading

We're going to continue using Hooked on Phonics for reading. We started the Kindergarten level in Pre-K last year and have been working on it here and there throughout the summer. We should definitely be able to get through the 1st grade level this year, but we'll have to see about the 2nd grade level. It's amazing how much more relaxed you are with the second child! ;)

Handwriting

We'll be using A Reason for Handwriting for Millie's handwriting. We're not going to rearrange the order of the letters to match the My Father's World units because I love the way they're presented in a logical order based on the way the letters are formed.

Bible

I picked up a copy of From Akebu to Zapotec when Hannah was in kindergarten, and it looks like it will be a perfect fit for our family this year. In Millie's kindergarten, we focus on one letter every week. This book contains 26 real stories of Bibleless peoples—one for each letter of the alphabet. Millie will be tagging along with Hannah's Bible lessons anyway because we'll be doing them together as a family in the evenings, but it will be a great way for her to learn to pray for one group of people each week and still focus on her letter of the week.

So there you have it—the 2011-2012 curriculum line-up!

This is the first year I'll have two "official" students, which makes me feel a little weak in the knees, to say the least. But I'm choosing to believe that my God is greater than my fears or my inadequacies, trusting completely that He doesn't call the equipped but equips the called. To Him alone be the glory!

Show & Tell: Adventures Weeks 33 and 34

2011-08-13T22:42:00.001-05:00

Oh, yeah! I have a blog!

Okay, okay ... so I really thought my next blog post would be Adventures Week 33 and only Week 33. But then Week 34 happened, and Week 33 still wasn't blogged. Then all of June happened, and Week 33 still wasn't blogged. And then all of July, and then part of August ... you get the idea. You might remember this same thing happened when we took off for Christmas vacation. Apparently when vacation time rolls around, I'm good for absolutely nothing! ;)

A normal person would just pick up where she is and start blogging again. But I'm not normal. I'm me. :) And because I have what can only be described as a severe case of OCD, I have to finish blogging Adventures before I can start blogging ECC. Truly must. So without further ado, here is my Show & Tell for Weeks 33 and 34 of Adventures in My Father's World. Three months late, but done nonetheless. :)

In science we learned about the effect air resistance has on objects as they move through the air. Hannah took two identical pieces of paper (one crumbled and one flat) and released them at the same time to see which would fall to the ground first. The crumbled piece fell first because it was a smaller object, so it had less air pushing against it.

Next we put to good use this new understanding of air resistance and some of my scrapbooking paper. (And that's a good thing because apparently back when scrapbooking was all the rage, I bought out the entire section at Hobby Lobby. Any guesses as to how much of it I've used over the past 8 years? Suffice it to say my my oldest hasn't even made it home from the hospital in her baby scrapbook!) Anyway, we took a square peice of scrapbook paper and folded it into a pyramid shape.

Then we released it to see how it would land. (Watch Hannah's face at the end of the second video. I love how it "clicked" for her all of the sudden!)

We also cut up a couple of Wal-Mart bags and made a pair of homemade parachutes. Our goal was to see the effect weight has on air resistance. Hannah chose two dolls—a light one and a heavy one—to attach to the parachutes. Then she launched them from the top of her swing set to see how they fared. Here are the two ~~victims~~ subjects:

And here's a video showing how it all went down. (Get it? "How it all went down?" Oh, I really need to get a life!)

We also read about The Wright Brothers, which led to some flight activities. We made paper airplanes with rudders and flaps in the wings which were supposed to help us see how planes can turn, climb, and dive. We tried several different times, but we never had much luck steering the planes.

We did, however, have success with the activity that explained how planes fly. Hannah held a sheet of paper just below her mouth and blew. We expected her breath to blow the paper down, but it actually went up instead because the air coming out of her mouth was moving so quickly across the top of the paper that the slower-moving air beneath it pushed back harder.

And finally, we learned about electricity and did a couple of static electricity activities. Hannah rubbed a balloon on her sweater and was impressed when static electricity made it stick to the kitchen wall.

But that wasn't nearly as fascinating as our next hair-raising activity!

In fact, this one was so good it required several minutes of staring into the mirror. Girls!

In history, we learned about the last six states added to our country: Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii. When we learned about New Mexico, one of our activities was to make Navajo Fry Bread. Hannah's Sunday school class made some a couple of years ago, and it apparently made quite an impression because she couldn't wait to get in the kitchen and start cooking! :)

Our taste buds loved it. Our arteries? Probably not so much! ;)

The girls chose to have theirs plain ...

... but I drizzled mine with honey. Delicious!

Hannah finished off her year by writing a letter to the President. This took many a pep talk on mama's part. I'm not exactly what you would call an Obama fan, and I found myself on more than one occasion thinking, "If only she was three years older, her 2nd grade year would have fallen during Dubbya's presidency, and she would be writing to him." So I just put her on the computer and told her to write something. Anything.

My husband dared me to put this picture on my blog without commenting about the mess on the desk, and I can't do it! Yes, this is what my desk looks like at the end of the year!

This is the rough draft Hannah came up with on her own. We worked together to edit it a little bit, which was mostly just reorganizing her sentences so they flowed a little better, but she also ended up adding a few other thoughts.

The finished product.

She was very proud of this letter! (Click to enlarge and read.)

She even illustrated it! :)

She added a stamp ...

... addressed it ...

... and put it in the mailbox. (Just pretend like the bird bird poop isn't there. We do!)

She asked if President Obama would write back to her, and I told her I didn't know what would happen. So imagine our surprise when we opened the mailbox a few weeks later and found this in it!

What'd'ya know? President Obama did something that put a smile on my face! It's a miracle!! ;)

Millie's Pre-K continued to go really well—much better than I ever expected! She especially loved those days when she got to read a new Hooked on Phonics book, and I got excited right along with her. I thought teaching her would present lots and lots of challenges, but she really did great!

We took two months off from Pre-K in February and March (oops!), so she only made it through Lesson 17 out of 26. But that's okay because we'll be doing them again this year on a Kindergarten level. (We'll focus on the science and Bible portion of each lesson, and she'll use A Reason for Handwriting and Hooked on Phonics for language arts.) So far she loves her school—especially the games and songs. Here she is singing her short vowel song.

So there you have it ... our last weekly report for what was truly a wonderful year with Adventures in My Father's World! Now I can blog ECC in peace! ;)

I hope you guys have all had a wonderful summer! I've missed staying connected via the blogosphere. It feels good to be back! :)

Only My Millie ...

2011-05-10T16:19:00.003-05:00

Greg helped the girls clean out their closet on Mother's Day. While I was sewing with one, he would take the other one back and have them try on clothes; then we switched. Millie found a camo shirt I made Hannah for a VBS dress-up day a couple of years ago and became enamored with it.

This is how it was intended to be worn ...

But this is how it looked best according to Millie's taste ...

So what do you think? Is she bound for New York or Paris in 15 years???

Show & Tell: Adventures Weeks 30-32 (Gasp!)

2011-05-08T23:49:00.015-05:00

Goodness gracious, what kind of slacker have I turned into?! Apparently the kind who's so ready for summer that she's doing good just to get school done, much less blog about it! Hang on to your hats ... we're covering some ground today! Here's what we've been up to in school for the past three weeks!

In Bible we spent Weeks 30 and 31 focusing on Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life. Now, travel back in time with me a couple of weeks. It's Easter week. Easter. Week. We're studying that Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life on Easter week. Score one for our homeschool! Plus, I noticed in the teacher's manual that resurrection cookies was one of our scheduled activities. WOOT WOOT! Perfect, right?! Yeah, I thought so, too. So don't ask me how in the world we managed to get through the entire unit (and the entire holiday!) without ever making them. :( Sounds like a bad case of end-of-year-itis to me! But at least we got to read some timely Bible verses. :)

In Week 32 we shifted our attention to Jesus as the Word of God. We spent some time talking about how words are important because they communicate ideas. We discussed how Jesus was with God from the very beginning, but He didn't come into the world in the flesh until he was born as a baby in Bethlehem. We spent a good while talking about how his appearing in the flesh meant that people actually knew him, rather than just knowing about him.

One of Hannah's Bible activities for Week 32 was rearranging the words to see what Bible verse they made.

Behold—the finished product!

In history, we spent Week 30 looking at the Transcontinental Railroad and the way it changed our nation by making it so much easier to travel to the West Coast. We learned that a Chinese crew worked on the California end of the railroad and an Irish crew worked on the Missouri River end, and the track was completed when the two crews eventually met in Utah.

We did some mapping to get an overall picture of the growth of our country's mainland.

The red area was acquired in the Treaty of 1783.

The blue area was acquired in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

The orange area was acquired by the Florida Treaty in 1819-1821.

The lavender area was acquired by the Annexation of Texas in 1845.

The pink area was acquired by the Settlement with England in 1846.

The yellow area was acquired by the Treaty with Mexico in 1848.

And finally, the green area was acquired by purchase from Mexico in 1853.

And we also learned that Colorado was the next state (#38) to be added to our country.

In Week 31 we shifted our attention to life on the plains. We read our last story from American Pioneers and Patriots, and we're all sad to have to say goodbye to that book! It was one of our favorites this year!

We added the next two states to our notebook (North Dakota and South Dakota) and learned about Mount Rushmore, which I have never seen in person but would really, really love to someday. I can't even begin to imagine the artistry and ingenuity it took to carve that mountain. I am completely and utterly fascinated by it!

And in Week 32, we added four more states: Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. I would be lying if I said Hannah will be sad when I give her her last state sheet. I would also be lying if I said Mommy would be sad to give it to her. :) But I have to give that kiddo credit for being a trooper and doing what she's asked to do. She still thinks it's fun to guess the state abbreviation before she turns the paper over to look, which is getting a little harder now that we've covered so many "M" states!

Here she is working on her Wyoming state sheet.

I try to add in hands-on activities for the states whenever I can. When we studied Wyoming, we read a few facts about Old Faithful here and watched a video of it erupting here. Then we simulated our own geyser eruption by blowing through a straw that was placed under an upside down funnel in a trifle bowl filled with water.

Hannah went first.

Then Millie wanted a turn. Look at Hannah's cheeks in this picture! She's blowing right along with Millie!

Daddy even wanted to get in on the action, and we got quite an eruption from him. We're not always fond of Daddy's big eruptions, but this one was okay. ;)

We also began looking at inventions that changed our world. This week we looked at McCormick's reaper, the sewing machine, and Thomas Edison's many inventions, including the light bulb. Other moms out there who know how to read probably studied Alexander Bell and the telephone this week, but moms like me just skipped right over that section and moved along to Edison. (Really, don't ask. I don't even get how my brain works.) Next week we'll go back and learn about that telephone. After all, it will be a huge part of the girls' lives in about 5 years, right?! :)

The girls picked out fabric to make pillowcases, oh, maybe three months ago??? So since we learned about the sewing machine this week, we finally went ahead and made them! Oh, the things you can get a mom to do when it's in the name of educating her children!

Hannah has really amazed me with her skill on the sewing machine, but I decided to just let Millie push the pedal while I guided her fabric along. ;)

Here they are with their finished products. Millie chose Disney princess fabric, and Hannah chose dinosaurs. Is that them, or what?!

In science, we spent Week 30 completing the second half of our magnet activities.

The girls measured to see how far away their magnet had to be to pull an object toward it ...

... then they saw that if they were trying to pull that same object up against gravity, they had to get their magnet closer to overcome the force of the gravitational pull.

They learned that their magnet could be used to guide metal objects that are in water ...

... and that the magnetic force will even travel through the water to pull them!

They had lots of fun using a magnet to make a paper clip "float" in the air ...

... and using like poles to push one magnet away from another.

(Especially the one in the picture below!)

We leaned that magnets can be used to temporarily make non-magnetic objects act like magnets.

The bar magnet is causing the washers to act as temporary magnets.

This new knowledge was used to build some pretty impressive structures out of washers and nuts!

And under Daddy's supervision, they even constructed an electromaget! (This is one Mama would have skipped right over. Woo hoo for Daddy being home!) :)

The battery made the metal rod magnetic, so the washer stuck to it.

We put a compass up to one end of the rod and saw that it attracted the South Pole of the compass.

Then we switched the battery around, which changed the direction of the electric flow through the coil, so the same end of the rod attracted the North Pole of the compass.

In Week 31, we moved on from magnets and looked at light and color, friction, and air power.

We learned that, although light shines in straight lines, you can make it turn corners.

We saw that the friction created when you rub a coin on my teacher's manual not only makes the coin hot but also smears the ink on the teacher's manual! :( (Stuff like that really bugs me. And this poor manual not only now has those smudge marks, but it also was apparently the victim of a brutal glue incident at some point. But it's okay; I'm taking it one day at a time and managing to cope with these little tragedies life throws my way.) ;)

I wish I would have had a prism on hand for our light studies, but I've never picked one up. That's one of many things on my school "to do" list for next year. :)

Our air power lesson had several activities. There's a slight chance that I may have put these activites off for one or two or seven days because the page just looked so daunting with stuff to do E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E I looked! It wasn't daunting in reality, but it looked daunting in the book. And when something looks daunting, I do what any rational girl does: I ignore it until it goes away. Only it didn't go away, so we finally got around to doing it a full week later. (Which might be why I'm posting three weeks' worth of updates in this one post!)

First we looked at how sails help boats move by catching air that then pushes them along.

Not much "wow" factor with those results! We may have to redo it in the pool when it warms up a little so we can really get a feel for how much the sail helps the boat to move.

For our second wind power activity, we taped a balloon to a straw with the goal of trying to get the balloon to move from one side of the room to the other using the air inside the balloon as its power source. First we tried using a long balloon (the kind clowns use when they make balloon sculptures for kids), but it just didn't have enough "oomph."

Don't you just love a 7-year-old who knows everything about everything? But we redid it, just to see if maybe she did know what she was talking about. :)

Nope, the long balloons just didn't work. But don't think they were wasted! We now have a collection of oddly-shaped balloon dogs, fish, and hats scattered around the house. ;)

When we used a regular balloon instead, our activity was a success. (Proud Mom moment: Listen to Millie at the end of this video! You go, Millie-Girl!!) :)

And for our final wind power activity, we made a windmill and used air to power the windmill so it would wind up a string with a button tied to the end of it.

Here's a picture of Hannah's windmill.

And here's the windmill in action. (She couldn't get it work the first time, so she swapped the button out for a lighter one.)

And in Week 32, we learned about sound. The main point of all of our activities was to reinforce that sound is just vibrations.

We put a balloon up to our CD player so we could "feel" the music. (And I'm not too proud to tell you that our music just happened to be the Armed Forces Medley. Nothing wrong with multi-tasking. And besides, it's May, and at this point Mama's all about doing whatever we can to get. it. done.)

We also put tissue paper over the end of a toilet paper tube so Hannah could feel the tissue paper vibrate when she sang into the tube ...

... and plucked a rubber band so she could see the vibrations.

We also made a couple of musical instruments that used vibrations to make different sounds.

Hannah really loved that last instrument we made. She's not allowed to take electronics to church camp this summer, so after we made this, she proudly told me she would be bringing it to camp because it's not an electronic. :) Then she carried it around for the rest of the evening, trying to figure out how to play Jingle Bells on it. But the funniest was this morning before church when I caught her doing this ...

And this is where I was going to put pictures of the butterfly release we went to for Earth Day (that was during Week 30), but this post is now so ridiculously long that even I can't stand it. And I'm a really wordy kind of a girl! :) So the butterflies will have to wait for another post.

Next time, I'm reporting on Week 33 and only Week 33. ;)

Hop on over to Kathi's A Heart Like Water or Kris' Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers to see what others did this week!

Multitudes on Mondays: 58–86

2011-04-25T11:34:00.003-05:00

Three weeks. No posts. But countless blessings. Here are just a few.

0058. For a 5-year-old remembering what to do in an emergency, even if the "emergency" really wasn't an emergency after all. :)

0059. For eating dinner with the windows up. In an instant, I was 9 years old and visiting my MawMaw and PawPaw's house.

0060. For an understanding friend and the way a great conversation with my oldest didn't have to come to a screeching halt in order to be there on time.

0061. For playtime with friends when we did finally get there. And a "maybe someday" picture. :)

0062. For libraries: free buffets for the mind!

0063. For beautiful days that draw you out of the comfort of your home to experience His creation.

0064. For exceeding a goal, setting a new one, then exceeding it. "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).

0065. For a sudden burst of energy and a sprint at the end.

0066. For an abundance of food and a large table so our friends could just stay for dinner.

0067. For Millie's excitement over being able to read. Everyone who passes through our door gets to hear a story.

0068. For a flexible schedule and being able to go help when the phone rang.

0069. For a great time of dissecting Scripture with the ladies at church to try to determine what that passage really means.

0070. For four little girls filled with excitement over their first camp experience. (Millie went for drop-off, but she's too young to stay!)

0071. That Hannah loved it so much she cried when I came to pick her up. She is eager to return this summer!

0072. For a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's without Mom and Dad. These are some of my favorite childhood memories, and I want my kids to have a chance to make those memories for themselves.

0073. For time. Time for me to just be a wife and for him to just be a husband. And time to tackle those projects that are simply too complicated to tackle with children underfoot.

0074. For hard work and hours of training and an amazing friend, all of which helped me to actually be ready on race day this year!

Fawn (my running partner who refuses to let me get out of training, despite my various excuses), me, and my friend Cyndy (who is a real runner and has lost over 100 pounds in the past 4 years). Don't you love that Greg had us stand in front of the ambulance—just in case!

0075. For making it to the finish line and knowing I ran the entire thing!!

0076. That my friend chose to have a slower time so she could stay with me and encourage me the entire way.

0077. For a new way of organizing our school day that has helped us achieve more in less time. Yes!!!

0078. For new signs of growth! We're not gardeners by any stretch of the imagination, but we're giving it an honest effort and learning a little more every year.

0079. For a God so powerful that He defeated death! And that by so doing, He defeated death for me!

0080. For a tradition that we "accidentally" started. The kids ask for them every Easter. :)

0081. For an honest conversation with a daughter last night, and for my amazing husband who handled it exactly the way I hope I would have if I had been there alone. (Yet I know myself well enough to know I would never have managed to stay even half as calm and understanding and encouraging as he did.) Soooo thankful he was there!!

0082. That God loves us and draws us to Himself and is faithful to reveal Himself to us even when we aren't so faithful in exchange.

0083. For a smile that now has an extra-wide gap!

0084. For a new middle digit in my weight. One number smaller than the old middle digit. It's not a big enough loss for anyone else to notice, but I know it, and it makes me happy.

0085. For my husband, who listens and is willing to work at marriage. There aren't words to describe how I feel about this man. I am blessed beyond measure to be his wife and thankful to be partnered with him for the rest of my life.

0086. For God's provision for our family all the time. I went to the dentist today to pay a $94 bill and was told not to worry about it, that they would just remove the charge from my account. Who does that??!

Head over to Ann's A Holy Experience to read about the blessings He has poured into others' lives this week.

The Lighter Side of Life

2011-04-22T08:04:00.016-05:00

Last time I didn't have a single "Hannah" story to share with you, but I'm making up for it this time! :)

When we were visiting MeeMaw and Kimpaw over Spring Break a couple of weeks ago, Kimpaw asked Hannah what she was studying in school. When she told him she was learning about California, he immediately grabbed an apple, a banana, and some walnuts, and held out his hand and said, "Hannah, this is California."

"A bunch of fruits and nuts!"

(And if you're reading this and you're from California, he wasn't talking about you! He was talking about the other people!) ;)

************************

One night we were getting ready to do our devotional. Greg, Millie, and I were all in the living room already, so I asked Hannah to grab a Bible and bring it into the living room with her when she came in.

She said, "Isn't the King James Bible on the table in there?"

Greg said, "No, we're not using the King James. It's too hard to understand."

So she walked in with a Bible in her arms and said, "Here's my easy reader Bible, Dad. You should be able to understand it."

************************

A couple of weeks ago, I took Hannah to Books-a-Million because she wanted a Sudoku book of her very own. While we were there, I found a copy of Digital Photography for Dummies and started looking through it. Hannah asked what it was about, so I explained the premise behind the Dummies series, that they have books about any topic you can imagine, and they explain everything to you as if you're a dummy who doesn't know anything about the topic to begin with. I told her they probably even have a Sudoku for Dummies book.

Her response? "Well, I ain't no dummy."

I said, "Well, you sure sound like one when you talk like that!"

She said, "No I don't. I sound like Grandpa."

I said, "Yeah, you do sound like Grandpa."

Everything was quiet for a minute, then Hannah said, "So ... you think Grandpa's a dummy, huh?"

************************

Later that day, we were at Wal-Mart picking up some groceries. The girls were tired, so both of them were riding in the cart. Needless to say, there wasn't a whole lot of room for the groceries!

I handed Hannah a carton of eggs and said, "You be careful with these. You know what happens if they get squished!"

Without missing a beat, she grinned and said, "Yep! We get to have scrambled eggs!"

************************

Hannah went to church camp for Kids' Weekend a couple of weeks ago, and I took advantage of the opportunity to take Millie out to eat since it's rarely just the two of us. We ended up at McDonald's because I am not only a health nut but also a big spender. ;)

I was getting our food when Millie pointed to her mouth and said, "Mom, I still have my gum!"

I said, "Look, there's a trash can right there. Go spit it out."

I picked up our tray off the counter, thanked the server, and turned my attention back to Millie—sweet, literal Millie—just in time to see her with her entire head in the trash can so she could literally spit the gum into it.

************************

And on the same trip, not 20 minutes later, we had another Millie moment. We were about to go pick up Hannah from camp, which was about an hour and a half away, so I told Millie she needed to go potty before we left. She took care of business, pulled her pants up, and said, "Mom, want to see what Mrs. Carrie taught me at the restaurant last night?"

I said, "What did Mrs. Carrie teach you?"

She said, "This." Then she began to raise one leg while she said, "Sometimes the handle is dirty and Mrs. Carrie doesn't want to touch it, so she uses her foot to flush." Then she started to lose her balance, so to brace herself, she put her hands on the seat of the potty!! ('Cause that's not dirty at all!)

She might be germy, but she makes me laugh!

Show & Tell: Adventures Weeks 28 & 29

2011-04-19T15:52:00.005-05:00

All right, sweet bloggy friends ... if this post actually gets published, it'll be a miracle indeed because not only am I putting two weekly wrap-ups in one post (which for some odd reason is amazingly difficult for me) but also I'm planning to publish it with today's date rather than changing the date to "put it where it's supposed to be chronologically," thereby satisfying my OCD. It's all about baby steps. (And who knew when I started blogging three years ago that it would end up being therapy?!) ;)

In history, we learned about Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and slavery in Week 28. Our text primarily focused on the life of Abraham Lincoln, and Hannah and Millie both really enjoyed learning about him. Millie has been telling everyone about the log cabin he lived in as a child (it only had three walls), while Hannah has been recounting a story about a town bully who thought he would pick a fight with Abe but found that Abe was a little more competition than he had bargained for!

Slavery and the Civil War are pretty dark times in our nation's history and are pretty tough for children to understand, so they were only mentioned briefly in our text. But in our book basket we had several books that gave a little bit more information about those topics.

(There's a chance I just might have become the oldest American Girl fan in America this year. I love, love, love these books!!!)

Here's the Abraham Lincoln notebook page Hannah made for her U.S. notebook.

And in Week 29, we learned about America's 34th through 37th states: Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada, and Nebraska.

I asked Hannah if she remembered doing a presentation on Kansas at co-op back in kindergarten, but she couldn't remember many details about it besides the Dust Bowl. I pulled up the blog post so she could read about it, and it was entertaining to watch little light bulbs turn on as she remembered various details.

In Bible, we learned about Jesus as our Shepherd. We've really enjoyed the way My Father's World has done the names of Jesus study this year, but because of our read-aloud, this one was the best by far!

Oh, my goodness gracious! It was all I could do not to stop the flow of the story after every paragraph to comment on how I saw us as lambs, Jesus as a Shepherd, Jesus as a Lamb ... it was the perfect read-aloud to go along with our Bible lessons! And every day, Marie Hazell (author of My Father's World) chose Bible passages that related perfectly to the assigned chapters for the day.

I won't tell you how the story ends, but I will tell you that the last chapter of the book was a beautiful picture of Christ, and it was also a real tear-jerker. I learned that day that it's not easy to read aloud when you're crying. I was trying my very hardest to stay composed and not let some children's book get the best of me, but I finally got to the point where my voice kept failing me, so I handed the book to Hannah (cuddled quietly on the couch next to me) so she could finish reading it for us. She didn't take it from me, so I turned to look at her and saw that she had a quiet river of tears streaming from red, puffy eyes down her cheeks as well. So I kept reading, and one word at a time (word, sniff, another word, gulp, another word, heavy breath, another word, sigh) we somehow managed to make it to the end of the story.

In Science, we've been focusing on physics for the past two weeks. In Week 28, we learned about energy, forces, hot and cold (expansion and contraction), and gravity.

To demonstrate how heat makes things expand and cold makes them contract, we ran hot water over a soda bottle for a few minutes, then put a balloon over the neck of the bottle. Then we put the balloon-capped bottle into a pot filled with ice water. The ice water caused the air inside the bottle to cool down and contract, sucking the balloon into the bottle. (Well, kind of sucking the balloon into the bottle. The results weren't as impressive as the picture in our book, but there was enough of a change for us to get the idea, anyway.)

There was definitely evidence that the air inside the bottle was contracting ...

... but the balloon didn't pull all the way inside the bottle the way it did in the picture in our book.

Then we basically did the same thing in reverse. We took the bottle that now had cooled-down air and a totally deflated balloon and put it into a sink full of hot water.

As the air in the bottle heated back up and expanded, it began to push the sides of the bottle back out and inflate the balloon.

And we also did an activity that demonstrated gravity. Yes, gravity. The main point of the lesson was not air resistance (like ~~Mama~~ someone tried to make it), but gravity. Just like the boldface title at the top of the page said. (And my mom was a reading teacher!! My reading teacher!!) Fortunately, I posted my question on the My Father's World message board and the ladies there helped me make sense of it all when my original explanation even left me with questions. :)

First I had Hannah climb on top of the kitchen table ('cause we just do really safe things like that around here) so she could drop a quarter and a quarter-sized piece of tissue paper at the same time. Obviously, the quarter landed first.

The point of this I now know was to show that gravity pulls everything down with equal force, despite its weight. So then why was there a huge difference between the time it took the tissue paper to fall and the time it took the quarter to fall? Because the tissue paper had air pushing back against it (air resistance), which slowed its fall. But gravity still pulled it down with the same force as it did the quarter. This was really important to know for the rest of our experiment to make sense. :)

Our next step was to remove the air resistance factor. To do this, we put the tissue paper and the quarter in identical boxes and dropped them once again. This time, despite Hannah's hypothesis, they landed at the same time.

Now it all makes sense. They landed at the same time because gravity pulls everything down with equal force, despite its weight, and we were able to see that when we removed the air resistance factor. We even did it one more time with eight quarters in the box and got the same result.

So thank you, thank you, thank you to my sisters on the MFW board for helping me salvage this lesson!

In Week 29, we did the first four activities that came with our magnet kit. (Yes!! I can handle magnets!)

Hannah gathered several items that she thought might be attracted to a magnet and tested them all. When she was done ... voila! Her first piece of modern art!

We learned that the earth has lines of magnetic force that run through it from one pole to the other, and that a compass is actually a special kind of magnet. Then we made a homemade compass and placed it in a bowl of water. Sure enough, the north pole of our magnet pointed toward the north!

We learned that lines of force in magnets run between the two poles, and magnets attract more strongly at their poles than anywhere else because the lines of force are so concentrated there.

You can see that the metal shavings were most attracted to the poles (ends) of the bar magnet.

The shavings were very attracted to the poles of the U magnet ...

... but not so much to the other parts!

We learned the oh-so-important life lesson that opposites attract! (This will be beneficial to them when they look for husbands in 15 30 years!)

She figured out that she could attach several small magnets to her large one if she put opposite poles together.

And here's what happens when you put like poles together. The top magnet looks like it's floating because like poles are together so they're repelling each other.

We learned that magnetic force can travel through objects. Here we put a piece of thin cardboard (part of a mac 'n cheese box) between the magnet and the marble, and the force was still strong.

We didn't find that too surprising, but what we tried next sure was!

The magnetic force was strong enough to pull through the cover of a hardback book ...

... plus several of the pages ...

... and even the entire thing! That surprised us!!

And then they used their magnets to make funny faces. (I wish I had a nickel for every car trip I took as a kid where this was my source of entertainment!)

As far as the three R's go ... much to Hannah's delight, we finished our unit on paragraphs. (This kid can write, but I have learned that she likes to write when it's her idea to write and only when it's her idea to write.) We took a very brief look at poetry and rhyming words, and Hannah came up with this poem:

Spring is here and summer's coming.
I won't have to do math or its summing.
I can play
All through the day,
And play in the sun
With everyone.

I laughed out loud when I read the first two lines! Now we're beginning a unit on dictionary skills, focusing specifically on alphabetical order for the time being.

And in math, we began a unit on multiplication. We downloaded a free game called Timez Attack, which has been an excellent resource for memorizing multiplication math facts!

Oh, and how about a quick nature picture? We've seen a couple of these lately. The first one we saw was at our local putt-putt golf course, and as we were going around the block we noticed that a neighbor has one growing in her yard, as well. I have no idea what it is (we'll have to ask our neighbor), but it's really beautiful!

So there you have it: a two-week "weekly" report with an authentic publication date assigned to it. Time to click the Publish Post button. I think I can ... I think I can ... I think I can ...

Multitudes on Mondays: 27–57

2011-04-04T11:18:00.005-05:00

I'm sure I've only noticed a small drop in an ocean of gifts He has poured into my life this week. Even so, my list continues to grow, and I am thankful.

0027. For being pushed beyond what I think my body can handle.

0028. For the friend who gently pushes.

0029. For the same friend who in some ways anchors me, reminding me that a heart full of wisdom is far better than a head full of knowledge.

0030. For the other friend who I can so fully trust. Who I know prays without ceasing. Whose daily walk points me to Him without fail. "Less of me, more of Him."

0031. For his peace for those times when I abide in the Spirit.

0032. For his grace for those times when my flesh overcomes.

0033. For the honesty of one little girl after a poor decision was made.

0034. For the opportunity to train the heart of the other, who tried to conceal it with a lie.

0035. For purchasing a book on my wish list at a price that seemed too good to be true!

0036. For authors like Hillyer who can take a geography book and turn it into a story book of far-away lands, with just the right touch of science and history added to the mix.

0037. And for this gem, also on my wish list, found on the bookshelf at MeeMaw and Kimpaw's.

0038. For their generosity in giving it to me ... even before I asked. :)

0039. For a daughter who asked if she could "add one" to my list.

0040. For the fact that the one she wanted to add was the love between our family.

0041. For little girls' hearts being so receptive that they put His words into action.

0042. For the desk getting cleaned off and the bills getting paid. :)

0043. For his provision in faithfully stretching our meager income. Truly, the numbers don't make sense. He is our Jehovah-Jireh.

0044. For hearing Greg share a new thought with me from a book he read on his flight last week: Our "messy house" is okay because we have a "pretty neat home."

0045. For waking up to find that he had cleaned the kitchen after I went to bed.

0046. For three extra bodies for a few hours one evening, and the laughter and joy and memories they added to our home.

0047. For the warmer days and the new life that is springing up everywhere I look.

0048. For children who love to play outside.

0049. For a husband who took the initiative to get our project going while my thoughts were consumed with next year's school.

0050. For a place right here in our small town for the girls to share some afternoon fun with their AWANA friends.

0051. For learning that there is an appropriate time to hit your sister. ;)

0052. For rejoicing in that knowledge!

0053. That "Coach Daddy" got to go with us and teach the girls a new game.

0054. That we have been blessed with good health and sharp minds and bodies that move, although we rarely give it a moment's thought.

0055. For this child, full of new ideas and boundless energy, who has been entrusted to my care.

0056. And for this one, tender and affectionate and full of compassion.

0057. For creative minds and never knowing what they'll come up with next, but always being amazed at whatever it is.

How about you? What gifts are you most thankful for this week?

Show & Tell: Adventures Week 27

2011-04-02T20:37:00.004-05:00

This week we finished Week 27 of Adventures in My Father's World. Or as I like to call it, the week with all the redos! ;)

In history this week, we learned that Minnesota and Oregon were the next two states added to the union.

Typically Hannah just does her state sheet and map work and we consider the state "done," but this week something on the state sheet piqued her curiosity and she wanted to look into it more. She read that Crater Lake in Oregon is an old volcano with a collapsed top, and she immediately wanted to see a picture of it. She googled it and found these breath-taking images!

What a beautiful place! I'm glad she took the time to look it up and "see" another part of our country that we had never seen before.

We were really surprised to see our U.S. map at the end of the week. I knew that California was added kind of "out of order" geographically because of the Gold Rush, but then I assumed we'd go back to working our way westward. But with the addition of Oregon, we realized that's not the way it worked after all.

In Bible this week we continued to look at Jesus as a Servant. One of my favorite days was when we read Matthew 25:31-46. In this passage, Jesus separates the sheep from the goats and blesses the sheep for giving Him food when he was hungry, something to drink when he was thirsty, and clothing and shelter when he was in need. They question this and tell Him they don't remember ever giving Him any of these things, and he replies, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." After we finished reading the passage, I shared an idea with the girls that I got from my friend Rose. (And yes, she is every bit as sweet as her name implies!)

You know how sometimes you see a person on a street corner with a "HUNGRY" sign but you don't know what to do as far as giving them money or not giving them money? Well, Rose has special bags made up for just such an occasion. So after school was finished for the day, the girls and I headed to Dollar Tree and bought enough supplies to make three "Blessing Bags." By the time we were all done adding to them, they had all kinds of goodies in them!

Each bag contains a tuna fish meal, two packages of peanut butter crackers, an applesauce and a spoon, peanuts, two bottles of water, a toothbrush, a toothbrush case, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, a washcloth, deodorant, socks, eight wet wipes, a bag to hold all the toiletry items, and a Bible.

We had such a good time shopping for these bags and putting them all together! They're currently in the trunk, ready to be shared with whoever the Lord might put in our path who has a need for one.

We also made plans to help the family of a student-athlete Greg occasionally takes home from school, but when we shared our ideas with him at dinner, he had a few reservations. He's still praying about that one so he can make a good decision for both our family and the student's family.

In science we looked at how matter can change from one state (liquid, solid, gas) to another, such as when a candle melts or when water boils.

We talked about the way water expands when it freezes, unlike most materials which shrink when they get colder. To demonstrate this, we filled a plastic container with water and placed it in the freezer. The book suggested using a water bottle, but we didn't have one handy that day so we tried using a Tupperware type of container instead. Didn't work out so well. ;)

Here's our container filled to the brim.

This is what it looked like when it came out.

We could sorta-kinda-maybe tell that it had expanded, but it also had some low spots in it. Soooo ...

Mama declared a redo.

Fortunately, Greg brought a water bottle home from work the next day and we were able to do the experiment the way the directions said to do it, with much better results. (Funny how that happens!) ;)

Here's our bottle of water, filled to the brim and ready to place in the freezer.

And here it is a full day later. Sure enough, the water expanded as it froze, forcing its way out of the top of the bottle.

We learned that insulated items hold in heat and cold better than non-insulated items. To demonstrate this, we wrapped one coffee mug in cotton and left one unwrapped. Then we put an ice cube in each mug. The book said the ice cube in the wrapped mug would melt more slowly because it was insulated. The book was wrong.

Here's Hannah putting the plastic wrap on both mugs.

Each mug has an ice cube. (The mug on the left is the insulated one.)

And here they are about six minutes later. Whaaaaat?!

So you know what Mama did?

Mama declared a redo.

The mugs we used the first time weren't identical, so one of them could have offered better insulation just because it was a better mug. So to make everything fair, we decided just to use identical juice glasses instead. And the other thing we did differently the second time 'round was to wrap the heck out of the insulated cup. None of this "wrap it once and we're done" business!

Ready to give it another try!

Yessss! This time it worked!

Okay, fine. Maybe the book was right after all. ;)

And for our final activity, we placed a variety of substances in the freezer to see if the freezing temperatures had the same effect on all of them. I got out an ice cube tray and had the girls choose items from the fridge and pantry. The only one I was dead set on doing was hair conditioner. I didn't think it would freeze, but I did think it would be interesting to see for sure.

Here's what they froze:
(Back, left to right) Spray butter, string cheese, vegetable oil, honey, conditioner, ketchup, grape jelly, and peanut putter.
(Front, left to right) Grape juice, milk, pickle juice, pancake syrup, strawberry syrup, chocolate syrup, pumpkin butter, and mayonnaise.

Here are the results after a day in the freezer.

They used toothpicks to determine how hard each substance was.

The strawberry syrup never froze! (This is the kind of strawberry syrup you mix with milk or squeeze onto ice cream.)

The chocolate syrup was thicker than normal, but it hadn't frozen, either.

The substances with the toothpicks in them were the ones that weren't frozen solid.

The ones that surprised us the most were the vegetable oil, which had a lotion-like consistency; the hair conditioner, which actually froze solid; and the grape jelly, which didn't change much from the way it was when we put in it!

In math this week, we transitioned from multiplication to division. This lent itself to an especially funny life lesson earlier today. Last night we had some friends' kids over for dinner, and we had Oreos for dessert. After lunch today, Hannah asked if she could have some Oreos for dessert. I told her, "There are two left. You can have one of them." That little stinker's first thought was that Greg and I had stayed up late and eaten all of them except for two! I reminded her that there were three extra people here for dinner last night, and when you divide a package of Oreos between 7 people rather than between 4, you don't get as many of them. She got it, but she wasn't very happy about it.

And in grammar, we wrapped up our unit on paragraphs. Hannah has been learning how to think of experiences in terms of how they look, sound, and feel, then put those senses into words so others can share her experience. Her assignment was to write about an experience, making sure to include sentences that told what she saw, heard, and felt. This is what she came up with:

"This morning I saw Millie. She had blond hair. She neighs like a horse. Her hair is tangly."

How are you supposed to react to that?! I said, "Wow, that's ... huh ... well, it's really ... um ... hmmm."

Honestly, what choice did I have?

Mama declared a redo.

I told her that all the sentences in her paragraph needed to talk about one topic, and she felt like they did because they all talked about Millie. I tried to point out that they didn't all talk about the same aspect of Millie because they jumped back and forth from her hair to the way she neighs like a horse (which, by the way ... what?!) to her tangly hair. I told Hannah to find one experience with Millie to write about, and she chose to write about what it's like to wake up with Millie in the morning. Here is her finished product:

"This morning I saw Millie. She has a pretty smile in the morning. I can hear her yawn. I can feel the warmth of her when she hugs me!"

That, I can accept.

And speaking of Millie, here are a couple of pictures of her working on one of her lessons this week.

Complete and utter cuteness, this child is!

For this part of her lesson, she draws a number card ...

... looks at it ...

... then writes the number and adds that many stickers or stamps to her paper.

The actual lessons are written to have your child choose an object and draw it that many times (whatever number card they choose), but who wants to draw 13 of something?! Every now and then she'll choose to draw 10 flowers or 5 swings or something, but we have found the stickers and stamps to be a faster and easier way to accomplish the same thing.

And finally, how about a little nature study nugget? Earlier today the kids ran in to tell me they found something sooo exciting outside. And it was pretty cool. It was a white frog!

Here it is in their frog habitat.

After a few minutes it began to look a little darker. I didn't know frogs could change color to blend with their surroundings?!

She said it was even darker in the first picture than it was when they first found it, but I can't verify the accuracy of that statement. I'm simply reporting what I was told. ;)

The plan was to watch it throughout the day and see if it changed colors anymore, but sadly our nature study went in a totally different direction. We learned instead that you can't keep a frog in a habitat in the direct sunlight or things don't work out so well for the frog.

And Mama can't declare a redo on that one. :(

This week I'm linking up with Kathi's Homeschool Highlights in My Father's World and Kris' Weekly Wrap-Up. Grab a cup of coffee and check them out! You'll be glad you did!

Multitudes on Mondays: 1–26

2011-03-28T14:15:00.011-05:00

Today I'm embarking on a new journey. Destination: Gratitude. I know this is a lifelong journey and I'll never fully "arrive," but I'm confident that my Guide will show me my world in a completely new way as we travel together. All I'm bringing with me is a heart that longs to praise Him, a mind that wants to be made new, and a body designed to see, hear, taste, smell, touch, feel, and reflect on—to truly experience—whatever He desires to show me along the way.

So here are my first steps toward 1000 Gifts. May the journey continue long after Mile Marker 1000 is reached!

0001 - Good friends and long car rides and the uplifting conversation that always results when the two come together.

0002 - Beautiful weather every. single. day. during Spring Break.

0003 - Doctors who catch mistakes that keep Kimpaws on earth a little longer so sweet memories can be made.

0004 - The excitement in my girls' eyes at the Boardwalk in Kemah.

0005 - Seeing my adventurous girl in her element as she darted from one big ride to another and my reserved girl slowly building her confidence as she gradually worked her way up.

0006 - Little girls getting to fish at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

0007 - Seeing that patience pays off.

0008 - Catching a catfish with a cane pole.

0009 - Spring in full bloom!

0010- Freshly squeezed OJ with breakfast.

0011 - A little girl's first stitches on a sewing machine.

0012 - My "hurry up and get it done" girl slowing down enough to make it neat.

0013 - The joy that comes from seeing the fruit of your labor. (Every single stitch was hers!)

0014 - A mom who taught me to sew so I could be there when it got to be too much for little hands to work with.

0015 - A mom who is still needed for all those things I don't know how to do!

0016 - Safe flights there.

0017 - Laughing until your sides ache.

0018 - Hearing that, after 16 years, he still misses me when we're not together.

0019 - My church family.

0020 - The God I worship with them.

0021 - Being made aware of gaps in my prayer life.

0022 - Hearing a new thought: "It's not death we fear, but what it might take to get there."

0023 - Safe flights home.

0024 - The smile on his face when he walked through the door.

0025 - Claps of joy when sweet Millie realized that what she was doing was spelling words!

0026 - Home. Agreeing with Dorothy that there's no place like it. And we got to be here all. day. long. Ahhhhh.

To read about the multitude of blessings others experienced in their lives this week, visit A Holy Experience.

Show & Tell: Adventures Week 26

2011-03-18T15:33:00.011-05:00

WOO HOO! We finished our week, and Spring Break is here!!!

In history this week, we saw our country continue to expand westward as pioneers took one of three trails to areas that were just beginning to be developed. All three trails left from Independence, MO, but they led to different parts of the country. The Santa Fe Trail led people in a southwest direction to Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Oregon Trail led people in a northwest direction to the border of Oregon and Washington; and the California Trail led people in a westward direction to Sacramento, California.

We also learned that California acquired its statehood in 1850.

Even though it's on the west coast, we weren't surprised to see California added next because so many people had rushed there to seek their fortune in the Gold Rush of 1849. It was interesting to see how many things in California refer to the Gold Rush: their professional football team is the San Francisco 49ers; their state flower is the Golden Poppy; their state nickname is the Golden State; and of course there's the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. (We were really surprised to learn that this is actually red rather than gold!)

Because we looked at the Golden Gate Bridge, we spent some time looking at the construction of bridges. First we made our own suspension bridge model.

All of our toy cars are in the attic right now, but our suspension bridge was able to hold the weight of a frog and a dinosaur! :) We made a mock earthquake by shaking the bottles of lemon juice, and our frog and dinosaur stayed in place as the bridge swayed. Then we scooted the lemon juice bottles closer together and held the ends of the bridge against them. This time when our "earthquake" struck, the frog and dinosaur immediately fell off. It was a neat way to see that a suspension bridge is a great idea in a place like California where earthquakes are common.

Next we looked at bridge construction in general. I gave Hannah two boxes, a piece of paper, and a quarter, and told her that her job was to design a bridge (paper) that could connect the two pieces of land (boxes) while holding weight (quarter).

For her first attempt, she didn't do anything to the paper except put it across the boxes, but she found that it wasn't able to hold any weight this way.

For her second attempt, she realized she needed to do something to make the bridge stronger, so she folded the paper into quarters. This design was the second strongest of all: It held a total of 24 quarters before collapsing.

Next she decided to see what would happen if she only folded the paper in half instead of quarters. The bridge didn't have as much support, and it only held 6 quarters before collapsing.

Next we rolled our paper to see what kind of bridge that would make. Turns out, not a very good one! Because of the rounded surface, we couldn't even get one quarter to stay on it!

We tried making a fanfold bridge to see what kind of support it would offer. It held 6 quarters, then bent in the middle and fell to the ground.

And finally we made our winning design, which was to open up the fanfold bridge and use it like an accordion fold. We had to raid the coin stash several times before we finally made this bridge collapse. It ended up holding a total of 36 quarters and 134 nickels! And it was still standing until I accidentally bumped it and sent it crashing down! (If we had designed an accordion fold suspension bridge, maybe that wouldn't have happened!) ;)

All those coins and still not much sign of buckling!

Finally crashed! But look at all those coins!!

We talked about the elements of design that made the accordion fold bridge so strong and discussed how engineers do what we just did: They look at the supplies that are available and try to use them in ways that give them the result they're looking for.

In Bible this week, we focused on Jesus as a Servant. We just started doing Our 24 Family Ways by Clay Clarkson in the evenings, and it was interesting how the two overlapped. One of the questions in our family time was, "If you were a peasant and a king suddenly decided to make you a princess, would you begin to treat people differently than you do now?" Hannah—bless her honest heart—said, "Yeah. Honestly, I would. I would want to be served." Sounds like there's lots of room for growth as we go through our suffering servant lessons! ;)

In science, we took a look at solids, liquids, and gases. We learned that we could mix baking soda (solid) with an acid like vinegar (liquid), and together they would release carbon dioxide (gas).

Our baking soda was inside the balloon, so we just dumped it into the vinegar.

We could "see" the gas being released because it filled up our balloon. The results were much more impressive than we expected to see!

I told the girls that gas is added to soda to make it fizzy, and we poured some into a glass to see the tiny bubbles. Then we added some raisins and watched them go up and down as the tiny bubbles attached themselves to the raisins, brought them to the surface, then popped, sending the raisins back down to the bottom of the glass, where the process was repeated all over again.

And finally, we discovered that baking soda doesn't have to be mixed with an acid to release a gas. If it's just heated up it will release some gas, which is what happens when you bake a cake. Greg's birthday just happened to be this week, so we looked at a piece of his birthday cake and found the tiny bubbles where gas was released from the baking soda during the baking process. Then we added some baking soda to hot water to see the bubbles for ourselves.

They're tiny, but they're definitely there!

For Spring Break, we're heading to Houston to visit MeeMaw and Kimpaw for a few days, then we'll head to the lake to visit Grandma and Grandpa for a few days. We're all looking forward to spending time with extended family.

To see what other My Father's World families did this week, visit Kathi's Weekly Homeschool Highlights at A Heart Like Water.

The Lighter Side of Life

2011-03-16T21:10:00.053-05:00

I don't think Greg has ever been the subject of one of these "The Lighter Side of Life" posts, but today he will be! But first we'll start with Millie. :)

One day we were talking about history in the car, and Millie asked, "Mom, what I want to know is, when did the Disney princesses happen?"

I said, "What do you mean, 'When did they happen?'"

She said, "You know, like when were they alive on the earth?"

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Millie has been all about math lately. She figured out how to add, and she's going crazy with it. One day as Hannah was working on word problems, Millie came up to the table and told me she had a word problem for me.

"Suppose I have a napkin with 7 goldfish. You ask for one goldfish and I give it to you. Then you ask for another goldfish and I tell you 'no.'"

I could tell from her voice that she was about to get to the question part of the problem. My mind was thinking of all the possibilities. Maybe "How many goldfish did I give you?" Or possibly "How many goldfish do I have left?" Oh, no. Her question was ...

"How does that make you feel?"

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Some of Greg's powerlifting athletes advanced to Regionals, so he's been on the phone with them working out schedules and travel arrangements. One of the kids' last name is Boutte, pronounced "booty." One evening after dinner, this particular kid called Greg's cell phone. He looked at the Caller ID to see who it was, and when he answered, he said, "Boutte! What's up, man?"

Millie looked at me and said, "Mom, did you hear that? Daddy called that boy 'booty.' That's kind of rude, isn't it?"

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And speaking of Greg ...

The other day we were driving along and talking about girls and drama and hormones. I said, "Good grief, what in the world are you going to do in 7 years when there are three of us and only one of you?"

Without missing a beat, he looked at me and smiled and said, "That's why I built the shop!"

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Would you belive I don't have one single funny Hannah story to share with you? She has been minding her P's and Q's lately and staying busy crocheting and reading. (She's attempting her first granny square afghan.) I'll definitely have to keep my ears open and give you a good Hannah story next time.

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As for myself, this isn't necessarily a funny story but more of a really quirky personality issue. But I honestly just spent the last two days completing six weeks' worth of blog posts. Apparently I can remember to take the pictures, I just fail miserably when it comes to transferring them from the camera to the computer. :P But something about the way my brain is wired makes it mandatory for me to post in chronological order, and heaven forbid I do more than one week's worth of school updates in a single post. That just wouldn't set well with my OCD. ;) And if you want me to let you in on a little secret, another post will magically appear on Tuesday when I have a chance to update again, but it will have last Friday's date on it because that's when we finished that school week. Told ya ... quirky.

So Stephenie, it's not that your computer was messed up and you weren't getting my updates! It's just that my updates all went up at once! :)

And Stephenie, Monica, and Erin ~ thanks for checking in on me and making sure everything was okay when I disappeared from the blogosphere for a while! You girls rock! :)

Show & Tell: Adventures Week 25

2011-03-13T16:03:00.022-05:00

Last Thursday we wrapped up Week 25 of Adventures in My Father's World.

Usually this is the part where I tell you which states we learned about during the week, but this week I'm going to give you a hint and see if you can figure it out. Ready? Here's your hint:

We ate pork loin and corn casserole for dinner Monday night.

you

guessed

IOWA,

you're right!

Actually, we added both Iowa and Wisconsin to our notebook as they were the 29th and 30th states.

In history, we learned so many things about the Gold Rush of 1849. We learned about Captain Sutter and the day one of his employees, Mr. Marshall, found gold on his land. Captain Sutter wasn't happy about this discovery because he didn't need the money and he was afraid that people who did need it would come dig up his land, which is exactly what happened. We were surprised to learn that not many people ended up getting rich from the Gold Rush. The main way it affected our nation was by bringing so many people to the West Coast. We also learned three properties of gold: (1) It's very heavy; (2) It's very tough; and (3) It's not affected by acid the way most metals are.

Here's the notebook page Hannah made for the Gold Rush:

I bought some gold colored beads and some foil pie tins and let the girls "pan for gold" in a bowl full of mud.

Hannah found the first gold nugget.

This was their stash when Millie decided to quit. (She does not like to get dirty!)

But Hannah worked a little longer and found several more pieces of gold before she decided to quit.

In Science, we learned about atoms and molecules. We learned that water is made up of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen, and we made some marshmallow water molecules.

Each "molecule" has two pink marshmallows to represent the hydrogen atoms and one green marshmallow to represent the oxygen atom.

We put them all in a cup, and when Greg came home from work, Hannah asked him if he wanted a glass of water.

I love the look on his face. "What are you talking about?!" Then she got to explain it to him. :)

We also did some hands-on activities with dishwashing liquid. Hannah learned that dishwashing liquid helps cut through grease to remove substances that water alone can't.

We buttered a dish, and Hannah tried to wash it with water alone.

Not only did the butter stay on the dish, but it made her hands a slippery mess!

When she added a little dish soap ...

... the butter rinsed right off.

Our book did an excellent job of pointing out that people often have to use a detergent similar to dish soap to clean up birds after an oil spill because they need something to cut through the oil that's all over their feathers.

We also learned that dishwashing liquid can spread water out. We did two experiments to demonstrate this.

First we sprinkled some pepper onto a bowl full of water.

Then we added some dish soap in the middle of the bowl. The dish soap caused the water right around it to spread out, pushing the pepper to the edge of the bowl.

And finally, we made some homemade bubbles and learned that when you blow air through a bubble wand, all you're doing is stretching out the soapy water around the puff of air. That's a cool way to think of it!

In math, we started a unit on weights.

One of our assignments was to find an item that weighed 1 kg. We must have spent a good 10 minutes weighing various items in the pantry. Finally, the peanut butter worked for us!

And just in case this might be helpful to any other All About Spelling users out there, I finally realized this week that just because a curriculum comes with tiles that love to fall off the dry erase board and land in or under the workboxes below it as you're trying to move them around during a lesson, doesn't mean you have to use them! A red and blue marker will work just as well to allow your child to see the relationship between vowels and consonants! Happy, happy day!

This week Kathi at A Heart Like Water is debuting a new My Father's World Weekly Homeschool Highlights. If you're a My Father's World user and you'd like to see what others are doing or give us a peek into your schoolroom, feel free to head on over and link up! :)

Holey Child

2011-03-11T21:58:00.003-06:00

Millie lost her first tooth tonight. Millie. My baby. Lost a tooth.

When Hannah lost her first tooth, I looked at her and exclaimed with joy, "Aww, you're growing up, kiddo!" But tonight, I looked at Millie and said with sadness, "Aww, you're growing up, kiddo."

Here's a look at our holey child. :)